Diplomacy desk: Kerry’s China Subversion
Republicans accuse John Kerry of “lobbying against anti-slave-labor legislation in Washington to secure diplomatic breathing room before his climate talks in Beijing,” reports RealClearPolitics’ Philip Wegmann. The bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would ban imports of Chinese goods made with such labor, is making no movement in Congress amid talk that Kerry “is subverting the president’s pledge” to make human rights central to his foreign policy. Kerry knows the bill’s passage “would further enrage Beijing,” as it’s “already bristling from international criticism of China’s mass detentions, forced sterilization and general abuses of its Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region.” GOP lawmakers also wrote President Biden concerned that his climate czar “is downplaying the genocide precisely because he intends to import solar panels that are produced using forced labor” to “meet your administration’s climate goals.” They’re not the only ones: “Human rights advocates have wondered for months whether this is why the popular legislation stalled in the House after sailing through the Senate” in July.
From the right: Voters Think Joe’s an Idiot
“Joe Biden’s presidency is not going as smoothly as he probably hoped it would,” quips the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams. “Only 43 percent of respondents in a survey” this month “believe the phrase ‘mentally sharp’ describes Biden ‘well,’ ” an “11-point drop from March,” confirming “a growing consensus that the president is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” In fact, views of “Biden’s mental acuity specifically” saw “the sharpest drop in all of his polled personal characteristics.” Simply put: “The more the president is in office, the dumber people think he is.”
Pentagon beat: Culture Wars Mask Real Ones
“Multiple recent Department of Defense officials” say “an internal focus on left-wing cultural battles likely distracted top brass from Afghanistan planning and military readiness,” Maxim Lott reveals at FoxNews.com. At least weekly meetings on “ ‘culture-war’ issues” include Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the heads of every service branch. Says one well-placed source: “They never met once on readiness. But they met every week on transgender issues, extremism, racism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, etc.” Thanks to things like dubious “anti-racist” training, says one ex-official, “our service members don’t trust” the high command.
Tech watch: Zuck’s Totalitarian Empire
The amount advertisers spent on Facebook in just the first half of 2021 — $54 billion — “surpasses the gross domestic products of most nations on earth,” observes The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance. And the Facebook “country” is a decidedly authoritarian one. Indeed, “Facebook is not merely a Web site, or a platform, or a publisher, or a social network, or an online directory, or a corporation, or a utility. It is all of these things. But Facebook is also, effectively, a hostile foreign power. This is plain to see in its single-minded focus on its own expansion; its immunity to any sense of civic obligation; its record of facilitating the undermining of elections; its antipathy toward the free press; its rulers’ callousness and hubris; and its indifference to the endurance of American democracy.” Forget antitrust: We need a civil-defense strategy against Mark Zuckerberg’s imperial predations and totalitarian worldview.
Libertarian: China’s Abortion Flip
Concerned about low fertility rates, China went from a one- to a two-child limit in 2015 and to three last May, recalls the National Post’s Colby Cosh. Now it’s going even further — limiting “the number of abortions performed for ‘non-medical purposes.’ ” You can’t help but “snicker” at the “ludicrousness”: “You guys flipped from ‘one-child policy’ to ‘three-child policy’ in six years. How soon will you be cranking that up to five kids or seven?” Yet if Beijing starts restricting abortions, what will that do “to its reputation in liberal internationalist circles”? Issues of “reproductive choice” hit home with “Western liberals: The old conservative joke is that abortion is the only sacrament they recognize. They may be in for a big test of their principles.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board