News & commentary by Dave Maxwell. Edited and published by Daniel Riggs.
1. China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Announces Sanctions on Pompeo and Others
2. Read the full text of Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem 'The Hill We Climb'
3. Army falsely denied Flynn's brother was involved in key part of military response to Capitol riot
4. Beijing Fills the Mideast Vacuum
5. Defined By Scandal At Voice of America, CEO Resigns At Biden's Request
6. QAnon believers struggle with inauguration.
7. President Biden's Tech To-Do List
8. Amazon offers Biden resources for COVID-19 vaccine rollout
9. China revives conspiracy theory of US army link to Covid
10. Irregular Warfare (IW) - Commentary (Jan 2021) | SOF News
11. 'Really quite shocking': Inside the ugly transition at the Pentagon
12. 'Are you QAnon?': One Trump official's brush with an internet cult gone horribly wrong
13. SecDef nominee pledges to evaluate information operations
14. Perspective | The media can be glad for the Biden White House's return to normalcy. But let's not be lulled.
15. Biden is inheriting a nonexistent Covid-19 vaccine plan from Trump administration, sources say
16. EXC: Biden Just Picked A CIA Director With a 7-Year-Long Relationship with Chinese Communist Party Fronts
17. EXC: Biden Personnel Chief Served At Chinese Intel Org Flagged By FBI For Recruiting Western Spies
1. China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Announces Sanctions on Pompeo and Others
This action seems to be an attempt to punish these former officials. Is this intended to try to make them unemployable with any company or organization that has ties to China? This is just not about banning them from traveling to China, Hong Kong or Macao
Is this a form of Chinese Lawfare? (Legal warfare for China, like artillery, prepares the 'terrain' for further action. Chinese legal warfare is designed to weaken the will of domestic and foreign populations, and to diminish their trust in law as well as in their leaders - all with the purpose of building support for China's interests. China's long-term approach is effective in building its narratives and furthering its efforts to achieve legitimacy. https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2020/02/02/guest-post-andres-munoz-mosqueras-and-nikoleta-chalanoulis-essay-china-an-active-practitioner-of-legal-warfare/)
More importantly is this intended as a message to the policymakers in the Biden Administration? If you mess with China you will be unemployable after you leave the administration?
2. Read the full text of Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem 'The Hill We Climb'
cnbc.com By Jennifer Liu
For those who missed it, Miss Gorman's brilliant recitation can be seen at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whZqA0z61jY&fbclid
It is worth watching. I think this poem will be studied in English classes for years to come.
3. Army falsely denied Flynn's brother was involved in key part of military response to Capitol riot
The Washington Post · January 21, 2021
Hmmm....
4. Beijing Fills the Mideast Vacuum
WSJ · by Robert D. Kaplan
A provocative subtitle.
Conclusion: “For centuries British foreign policy was aimed at preventing any one power from dominating continental Europe. Similarly, American foreign policy should now aim at preventing any one power from dominating Afro-Eurasia-what the great British geographer Halford Mackinder labeled the "World-Island." By linking Europe with East Asia through the Middle East, China would eventually develop the ability to threaten North America economically and militarily. This is ultimately what Belt and Road is all about. The Biden administration must focus on stopping it.”
5. Defined By Scandal At Voice of America, CEO Resigns At Biden's Request
NPR · by David Folkenflik · January 20, 2021
Certainly not unexpected.
6. QAnon believers struggle with inauguration.
The New York Times · by Kevin Roose · January 20, 2021
Wow!
Again, it is difficult for me to believe how anyone can take QAnon seriously. I wonder if the QAnon "influencers" actually believe the BS they spew?
Excerpts:
“Others expressed anger with QAnon influencers who had told believers to expect a dramatic culmination on Inauguration Day.
"A lot of YouTube journalists have just lost one hell of a lot of credibility," wrote a commenter in one QAnon chat room.
Still others attempted to shift the goal posts, and simply told their fellow "anons" to hang on and wait for future, unspecified developments.
"Don't worry about what happens at 12 p.m.," wrote one QAnon influencer. "Watch what happens after that."
And some appeared to realize that they'd been duped.
"It's over," one QAnon chat room participant wrote, just after Mr. Biden's swearing-in.
"Wake up," another wrote. "We've been had."
7. President Biden's Tech To-Do List
The New York Times · by Shira Ovide · January 20, 2021
Excerpts:
What else? Mr. Biden's economic revival plan includes suggestions to "launch the most ambitious effort ever" to modernize U.S. cyberdefenses. Maybe this is the year for a federal data privacy law? And there are rifts among Democrats on special employment treatment for "gig" workers.
The most urgent priorities for the new administration are to end the pandemic and help Americans recover from the damage. But how the U.S. government handles these complex tech questions will also have a big effect on Americans and others around the world.
8. Amazon offers Biden resources for COVID-19 vaccine rollout
TechCrunch · by Brian Heater
9. China revives conspiracy theory of US army link to Covid
The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · January 20, 2021
Excerpts:
“Tit-for-tat accusations of the virus beginning in a lab have bubbled since at least mid-2020, after China's attempts to cover up the initial outbreak. In recent months Chinese officials have ramped up efforts to suggest the virus began outside of China, airing theories without evidence linking it to US military personnel, and there has been blanket state media coverage of virus detections on frozen food imports and ice-cream.
WHO's director of the health emergencies programme, Michael Ryan, said it was "highly speculative" to argue that coronavirus came from outside China, and investigations should start where the first confirmed human cases emerged.”
10. Irregular Warfare (IW) - Commentary (Jan 2021) | SOF News
sof.news · by John Friberg · January 20, 2021
11. 'Really quite shocking': Inside the ugly transition at the Pentagon
Politico· January 20, 2021
Not a good look for the Pentagon.
12. 'Are you QAnon?': One Trump official's brush with an internet cult gone horribly wrong
Politico· by Josh Gerstein · January 19, 2021
A study in disinformation and active measures? But by who? This is a fascinating story.
13. SecDef nominee pledges to evaluate information operations
Defense News · by Mark Pomerleau · January 20, 2021
We need this done beyond DOD. We need a national level effort to effectively employ this critical national instrument of power.
Perspective | The media can be glad for the Biden White House's return to normalcy. But let's not be lulled.
The Washington Post · by Margaret Sullivan· January 21, 2021
A very interesting and important critique.
Excerpt:
"If you believe that now with Trump gone you can go back to the way things were, you will be complicit in allowing miscreants to avoid the blame and focus they deserve, and create more ground for lies and bombast," wrote Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, in a powerful Twitter thread.
He's right. By the end of the Trump administration, the national press was doing things differently, and better. More than in the past, some journalists (certainly not all) were standing up for democracy without embarrassment, without fearing they'd be called partisan. Some had figured out how to present an election not as a mere horserace, but as a question about substance, character and the nation's future.
15. Biden is inheriting a nonexistent Covid-19 vaccine plan from Trump administration, sources say
CNN · by MJ Lee
How can this be? A leadership failure on an unprecedented scale if this is accurate.
16. EXC: Biden Just Picked A CIA Director With a 7-Year-Long Relationship with Chinese Communist Party Fronts
Hmmm...This is also an attack on the Carnegie Foundation.
17. EXC: Biden Personnel Chief Served At Chinese Intel Org Flagged By FBI For Recruiting Western Spies
"Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining."
- Robert M. Hutchins
From T.S. Eliot's essay "The Perfect Critic" for the literary journal Athenaeum in 1920: The vast accumulations of knowledge - or at least of information - deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.
"The primary purpose of the Rolex is not as a timepiece but rather as a life insurance policy. When the situation goes pear-shaped and you've somehow made it to the airport, the Rolex buys you a seat on the last flight out of Heart of Darkness International Airport. As your aircraft circles the city, you look down at the rising columns of black smoke and imagine the scene downtown in the city square where they're chopping the few remaining Westerners up into monkey meat, you look at your wrist where your treasured timepiece used to be and you think 2 things: A) 'Well I guess the Rolex finally paid for itself,' and B) 'I can always buy another watch ... ' "Unknowndfa
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