DOJ Bombshell: Chinese Consulate In San Francisco Harboring 'Active Duty' PLA Researcher Wanted By FBI

Amid a crazy day of ordered consulate closures, alleged death and bomb threats made against the Chinese Embassy in Washington and diplomatic wrangling, and on threats out of Beijing to "respond" in a devastating way to Trump's growing pressure campaign and China-related sanctions, Axios is just out with a bombshell late in the day Wednesday that ensures the tit-for-tat will only grow much more intense.

"A researcher who lied about her affiliation with a Chinese military university entered the Chinese consulate in San Francisco after being interviewed by the FBI on June 20 about alleged visa fraud and has remained there, according to an FBI assessment in court filings dated July 20," Axios writes.

If accurate, this would give some level of evidence to support Senator Marco Rubio's earlier charged allegation that "China’s Houston consulate is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue," as he tweeted, riling Chinese diplomats and pundits. He called it and others a "spy shop" which is part of the "Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States."

Analysts cited in the Axios report say that if the FBI allegations are true of the diplomatic outpost, which enjoys immunity from US law given its special protections under international law as an extension of the main embassy, it would constitute a "highly unusual" and "extraordinary" case given the severe abuse of consular privileges.

"It is highly unusual for a Chinese diplomatic post to associate so closely with a suspect in an intellectual property theft-related case," New York-based cyber crimes lawyer Minyao Wang told Axios. "Sheltering a defendant in a criminal case by using the diplomatic immunity of a consular building, if true, is really extraordinary."

Here are the known details, per Axios, related to one Tang Juan - a University of California-Davis researcher previously admitted on a J-1 visa (non-immigrant visa issued to scholars engaged in exchange type programs):

On her visa application, Tang stated that she did not have any affiliation with the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese military.

But an investigation revealed that she worked at the Air Force Military Medical University (FMMU), a PLA-affiliated university in China, and she is considered to be active military personnel.

After obtaining a warrant, the FBI searched her home and found evidence of her affiliation with the PLA.

On June 26, Tang was charged with visa fraud.

At that point Tang reportedly fled to the San Francisco consulate and is believed to have been given "safe harbor" there in order to avoid prosecution. She's said to still be hiding out their under Chinese diplomatic protection.

This comes amid a spate of similar charges against Chinese nationals at research and academic institutions who attempted to conceal their ties with Chinese government entities. However it seems the first such case of an individual hiding out at a consular or embassy compound.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/doj-bombshell-chinese-consulate-san-francisco-harboring-active-duty-pla-researcher

Liberal Zionism Begins to Make the Journey Towards a One-state Solution

Peter Beinart, a bellwether for American Jews, has provoked a storm by renouncing the two-state solution and urging equality for all

Peter Beinart, an influential liberal commentator on Israel and Zionism, poked a very large stick into a hornets’ nest this month by admitting he had finally abandoned his long-cherished commitment to a two-state solution.

Variously described as the “pope of liberal Zionism” and a “bellwether for the American Jewish community”, Beinart broke ranks in two essays. Writing in the New York Times and in Jewish Currents magazine, he embraced the idea of equality for all – Israelis and Palestinians.

Beinart concluded:

“The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades – a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews – has failed… It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish-Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish-Palestinian equality.”

Similarly, the NYT article was headlined: “I no longer believe in a Jewish state.” Beinart’s main point – that a commitment to Israel is now entirely incompatible with a commitment to equality for the region’s inhabitants – is a potential hammer blow to the delusions of liberal Jews in the United States.

Long journey

His declaration is the apparent culmination of a long intellectual and emotional journey Beinart has conducted in the public eye. It’s a journey many American liberal Jews have taken with him.

Once the darling of the war-mongering liberal establishment in Washington, he supported the illegal attack on Iraq in 2003. Three years later, he wrote a largely unrepentant book titled The Good Fight: Why Liberals – and Only Liberals – Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.

There is no heavyweight publication in the US that has not hosted his thoughts. Foreign Policy magazine ranked him in the top 100 global thinkers in 2012.

But his infatuation with Israel and Zionism has been souring for years. A decade ago, he published a seminal essay on how young American Jews were increasingly alienated from their main leadership organisations, which he criticised for worshipping at the altar of Israel even as Israeli governments lurched ever further rightwards. His argument later formed the basis of a book, The Crisis of Zionism.

The tensions he articulated finally exploded into physical confrontation in 2018, when he was detained at Israel’s main airport and nearly denied entry based on his political views.

Beinart has not only written caustically about the occupation – a fairly comfortable deflection for most liberal Zionists – but has also increasingly turned his attention to Israel’s behaviour towards its large Palestinian minority, one in five of the population.

Recognition of the structural racism towards these 1.8 million Palestinian citizens, a group whose identity is usually glossed over as “Israeli Arabs”, was a clear sign that he had begun poking into the dark recesses of Zionism, areas from which most of his colleagues shied away.

Disappointment and distrust

Beinart’s two essays have been greeted with hesitancy by some of those who might be considered natural allies.

Understandably, some Palestinians find reason to distrust Beinart’s continuing description of himself as a Zionist, even if now a cultural rather than political one. They also resent a continuing western colonial mentality that very belatedly takes an interest in equality for Palestinians only because a prominent liberal Jew adopts the cause.

Beinart’s language is problematic for many Palestinians too. Not least, he frames the issue as between Palestinians and Jews, implying that Jews everywhere still have a colonial claim on the historic lands of Palestine, rather than those who live there today as Israelis.

Similarly, among many anti-Zionists, there is disappointment that Beinart did not go further and explicitly prescribe a single democratic state of the kind currently being advanced in the region by small but growing numbers of Israelis and Palestinians.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/liberal-zionism-begins-make-journey-towards-one-state-solution/5719138

How Shady 'Shadow Lenders' Are Helping Fuel The $1.6 Trillion Student-Loan Crisis

Discerning between which colleges are outright scams, and which are venerable American institutions isn't always easy. After all, if we're going solely by the advantage that a degree confers in the labor market, one could argue that a degree in art history from Wesleyan probably isn't worth the paper it's printed on, let alone the $250,000+ sticker price.

But in a world where 'non-profit' institutions have accrued endowments worth hundreds of millions (and in some cases, billions) solely from 'alumni fundraising', yet still charge teenagers unimaginable sums for degrees that they don't necessarily want or need (but have been brainwashed by society to believe they most possess), the standard for what constitutes abusive and predatory behavior is probably unjustifiably high.

In a recent study by the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group that purports to protect students from predatory lenders, researchers described a $5 billion "shadow lending" network that they said charged exorbitant interest rates - sometimes as high as 35% annually - to lend to students at for-profit colleges which often have poor track records of guiding students to the jobs market.

Of course, Americans have $1.6 trillion in student loans outstanding. Compared to this, $5 billion over a decade is a drop in the bucket. But like most lenders who specialize in extending credit to the desperately poor, the lenders who partner with these schools engage in all kinds of deceptive and shady practices, often with the explicit aid of the schools they work with.

Over the past decade, students have borrowed more than $5 billion through an opaque web of companies to pay for training at for-profit schools, the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group, found. These products, which aren’t traditional federal or private student loans, often carry high interest rates and other risks for borrowers, according to the SBPC.

In addition, by providing financing to students, this shadow credit system, as the SBPC dubs it, helps to keep programs training students for careers in fields like trucking and cosmetology in business — even when they’re prohibitively expensive for many and don’t provide graduates with a credential that’s valuable in the labor market.

“This whole cottage industry is allowed to prey on and rip off the most vulnerable borrowers in our country,” said Seth Frotman, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. “These players are key cogs in the larger student-debt crisis, but also critical components of what allows predatory schools to thrive.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/how-shady-shadow-lenders-are-helping-fuel-16-trillion-student-loan-crisis

Bernie Sanders Secures Support from Half of Senate Democrats In Bid to Defund the Pentagon

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday touted securing the support of half of the Senate Democrats for his amendment to defund the Pentagon by 10 percent and invest in “distressed communities” instead.

Sanders’ amendment to cut 10 percent of the Pentagon’s budget to invest in “human needs” gained support from 23 members of the Senate Democrat Caucus — half of the 45 Democrats in the Senate.

The support was not enough to get the amendment passed and part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, but was a show of support from Democrats for defunding the military.

Sanders said in a statement after the vote:

Today, almost half of the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus — 23 Senators — voted to cut Pentagon spending by 10% and invest in human needs. This is far and away the most significant step forward in recent years in addressing our bloated $740 billion military budget and changing our national priorities.

We are going to continue building a political movement which understands that it is far more important to invest in working people, the children, the elderly, and the poor than in spending more on defense than the next 11 nations combined.

Sanders’ amendment was co-sponsored by progressive Sens. Ed Markey (MA), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Ron Wyden (OR), and was endorsed by Senate Democratic Leader Schumer (D-NY).

Sanders also pointed out that a companion bill in the House received 40 percent support from Democrats.

The amendments to defund the Pentagon come on the heels of progressive activists’ calls to “defund the police.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called Sanders’ proposal “unhinged.”

“Today, the Senate will vote on a Democrat amendment to slash defense spending that was advertised in an op-ed titled ‘Defund the Pentagon.’ From defunding the police to defunding the U.S. Armed Forces. Republicans are going to stand firm and defeat this unhinged policy,” he tweeted.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/22/sanders-secures-half-senate-democrats-defunding-pentagon/

Schumer: Trump ‘Trying to Deflect Blame’ to China – ‘He Is a Risk to Public Health’

During a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that President Trump referring to coronavirus as the “China virus” shows that the president is “trying to deflect blame” and argued that the president “is a risk to public health” when he speaks and “more than anything or anybody else, the responsibility for America’s failure to deal competently with COVID-19 falls squarely on President Trump’s shoulders.”

Schumer said, “It’s remarkable that President Trump has lowered the bar so much that his performance yesterday was seen as a change in tone. It’s a very sad state of affairs in our country when one day of the president reading statistics is hailed as leadership, when that’s what he should have been doing all along. The mere acknowledgment by the president that COVID-19 is raging through our country is some kind of breakthrough? Is that what people believe? Is that what Trump wants the people to believe? That’s crazy. The truth is, every time the president takes the podium, he is a risk to public health.”

He continued, “Six months into the coronavirus, and the president has only just come around to the idea that wearing masks would be a good idea. He deserves criticism for that belated admission, not praise. Six months into the crisis, and the president said yesterday his administration is ‘in the process of developing a strategy that’s going to be very, very powerful.’ Six months in. Countries in Europe and East Asia developed national testing regimes ages ago, and that’s why they’re way ahead of us in fighting this crisis.”

Schumer concluded, “President Trump started his press conference by labeling COVID-19 the ‘China virus’ – which shows the president’s still trying to deflect blame and play political games with this deadly serious virus, games that are divisive. The truth is, more than anything or anybody else, the responsibility for America’s failure to deal competently with COVID-19 falls squarely on President Trump’s shoulders.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/07/22/schumer-trump-trying-to-deflect-blame-to-china-he-is-a-risk-to-public-health/

>>10049473

UK spelling

>>10049482

Rubio = what Sheldon Adelson wants