Democrats didn’t expect it to be this bad…
Weeks after Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign and pollsters are already showing massive red flags.]
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Gal Luft, the ‘missing’ whistleblower responsible for exposing Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s China-related corruption, has been charged by the Biden Department of Justice (DoJ) for acting as an “unregistered agent of China.”
Luft is now hiding overseas. You really can’t make this stuff up.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer called Luft “very credible” as a whistleblower against the Bidens, but earlier alluded to him being ‘missing’ and not able to testify before his committee.
Federal prosecutors in New York also claimed Luft, a US-Israeli citizen who headed the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a U.S. think tank, was involved in arms trafficking and violated sanctions by brokering sales of Chinese-made weapons and Iranian oil to China.
The very same background that makes Luft credible is what Biden’s DoJ is using to prosecute him.
According to a DOJ press release:
[Gal Luft] engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes. He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement.
Perhaps this is all true. Perhaps it’s not. But it sounds exactly like the kind of guy who would have real evidence of bribery and foreign influence peddling against the Bidens.
The bigger question is why indict him now?
The indictment was handed down by a grand jury in 2022 and yet only unsealed on Monday.
Well, last week, the New York Post published a 14 minute video of Luft stating that in 2019 he provided evidence to the DoJ and FBI on Hunter Biden’s shady international deals which made him a target of the Bidens. In the video, made in an undisclosed location, Luft said:
I, who volunteered to inform the US government about a potential security breach and about compromising information about a man vying to be the next president [Joe Biden], am now being hunted by the very same people who I informed [on] — and may have to live on the run for the rest of my life.
Luft claimed that both Hunter and Jim Biden, the president’s brother, received tens of thousands of dollars a month each from the state-controlled energy company China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC) to access the Biden’s FBI connections and use the family name to promote China’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
And now just days later, he is being prosecuted by the Biden’s for allegedly being in bed with China.
In last week’s video, Luft claimed to have provided this information to the FBI and DoJ during a March 2019 meeting in Brussels, but rather than pursue his claims, DoJ covered it up.
Then, he says, they went after him.
Luft was arrested in Cyprus in February this year but managed to flee after being released on bail. His arrest came after Interpol issued a warrant against him on suspicion of arms trafficking to Libya and China. In a tweet shortly afterwards, Luft claimed his arrest by Cypriot police was part of a ‘politically motivated extradition request’ by the United States.
He added that: “DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim & Hunter Biden.”
In his video Luft also claimed he was arrested in Cyprus to stop him from testifying before the House Oversight Committee that close Biden family members had been bribed by a source with ties to the Chinese military.
“He’s got a wealth of information. But they never followed up on that meeting. Instead, they arrested him in Cyprus to silence him,” Republican Senator Ron Johnson told Fox News, accusing the government of cover-up.
As Douglas Andrews writes in the Patriot Post:
[when] a low-level CIA analyst and holdover from the Obama administration begins plotting to have Donald Trump removed from office just two weeks into his term, Democrats are quick to protect his identity, laud him for his “patriotism” and his status as an “apolitical civil servant,” and promote his hearsay claims as the substance for impeaching a sitting president.
But if, on the other hand, as the New York Post reports, a credible firsthand witness to corruption is poised to testify to the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee that the Biden Crime Family “received payments from individuals with ties to Chinese military intelligence and that the Bidens had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their [Chinese] benefactors,” well, then the deep-state Democrats move to indict him.
If Donald Trump’s DoJ had criminally prosecuted whistleblowers against him, there would be outrage in every media outlet. But it is Biden, so they take his DoJ’s indictment at face value and allow Team Biden to discredit and silence the whistleblower.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
“Harry Potter” actress Helena Bonham Carter has landed herself in hot water after speaking out against liberals’ favorite weapon of choice: cancel culture.
Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Yes, Donald Trump took scores of highly classified materials to his home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but at least he didn’t stash them next to his old sports car in a garage.
Mar-a-Lago is also protected by the Secret Service.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden may be the only POTUS to own a very sweet, racing green, 1967 Chevy Corvette Stingray – TS/SCI Edition.
Who knows what’s in the glove compartment?
The latest find by government investigators has shown former Vice President Biden apparently took a second batch of highly classified materials after leaving office in 2017 and stashed them in his Delaware beach home’s garage.
The first batch found in a closet of a private office in DC Biden used relating to his shady relationship with the Penn Biden Center, including Top Secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) which requires extraordinary security measures to protect.
In fact, since they include intelligence sources and methods (people and processes) they must only be viewed, used, or discussed in a highly secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).
As far as we know, Biden’s garage where he keeps his Corvette is not a SCIF.
But that didn’t keep Biden from arguing his garage was still somehow secure, because, well, it is locked.
In the White House’s South Court Auditorium, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked the president, “Classified materials next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?”
“My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden responded.
“People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously.”
Ummm… LOL.
Of course, you do, Joe. And we take you seriously as well.
Continuing the patterns denial and obfuscation, on Wednesday, Doocy, along with other White House correspondents, had a tense encounter with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the classified documents.
“On these documents, how could anyone be that irresponsible?,” Doocy asks, reiterating Biden’s question about Donald Trump after boxes of classified documents were found in former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year.
Despite the barrage of intense questions about the documents over the past two days, Jean-Pierre has frustrated reporters by repeatedly dodging the questions.
The Blaze reported:
CBS anchors Errol Barnett and Lana Zak slammed Jean-Pierre for having “not answered a single question” about the discovery of the documents.
“For a second straight day now, the White House struggling to answer any questions related to classified documents discovered at locations associated with President Biden, citing Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, simply reading a statement, where she says the president was surprised by the discovery, takes this matter very seriously, the documents were inadvertently misplaced, and he doesn’t know what’s in them,” Barnett began.
“She has not answered a single question outside of a prewritten statement by the president’s lawyers,” he said.
Thankfully, reporters are now directly questioning Team Biden’s narrative about being “transparent” and forthcoming about the classified documents.
One big question that also remains unanswered is why Biden failed until now, to disclose the finding of the first batch of his mishandled classified documents, which occurred not long after the unprecedented August FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and only days before the 2022 midterm election in November.
Hopefully, many other unanswered questions, such as did Biden use any of this classified material while writing his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” will be addressed soon.
According to an order signed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland has appointed Robert K. Hur as special counsel, a veteran prosecutor, to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” at Mr. Biden’s think tank in Washington and his residence in Wilmington, Del.
But this independent counsel should not preclude the media and the GOP-led House from continuing to push for the full truth on this issue.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Bad idea. It was just a matter of time before the conservative Republican populists ranting against defending Ukraine and America’s so-called ‘forever wars,’ would join forces with the far left.
Echoing Donald Trump’s language, Gaetz has said: “I sometimes feel as though I’m waging a forever war against forever wars.”
In this case, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida suggested left-wing Democrats and populist Republicans might join forces in opposing U.S. support for defending Ukraine against Russian conquest and ending U.S. military involvement in securing Somalia from ISIS.
But this doesn’t mean just allying with any left-wing congressional Democrats, it means radical members of “the Squad,” partly led by none other than Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the Socialist Democrat from New York.
While his War Powers measure proposed to remove U.S. troops from Somalia was rejected by a 219-vote margin in the House of Representatives on April 27, Gaetz said that he appreciated the contributions of several Democrats who backed his bill, including members of “the Squad.”
It also means befriending Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, the infamous antisemitic Democrat from Minnesota.
As reported by The Daily Caller:
“[W]hile we disagree strongly on a variety of issues, I think there should be greater connectivity between the anti-war right and the anti-war left,” said Gaetz, naming Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna, Jamaal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar as his advisers on his recent measure. “I am grateful for the advice that I’ve gotten from [them on] war powers bills,” he said. He declined to say whether the two camps would unite to form a formal caucus in the House.
The mention of Omar as a confidant on a foreign policy issue comes despite Gaetz’s earlier positions. In February of this year, Gaetz voted “Yea” to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the chamber’s chief panel on foreign policy issues, for statements that were allegedly antisemitic and trivialized the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, according to the text of the resolution.
It is doubtful Gaetz will win much support for his efforts. His resolutions to remove troops from Syria and Somalia were rejected by consistently large margins (165 GOP members voted against the recent resolution), and he hasn’t introduced any bills in this Congress to reform the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
But it’s not just allying on ‘war powers.’ They have already allied elsewhere.
Earlier, Gaetz and AOC co-sponsored a bill to restrict members of Congress from owning or trading stocks.
Unlike military resolutions, this is something I may be able to support.
The New York Post reported: “When Members have access to classified information, we should not be trading in the stock market on it,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s really that simple.”
“Members of Congress are spending their time trading futures instead of securing the future of our fellow Americans,” Gaetz said. “We cannot allow the Swamp to prioritize investing in stocks over investing in our country.”
I generally support restrictions on members of Congress trading stocks. But this bill may go a bit far, not allowing representatives to own any individual stocks.
Prohibiting trading stocks while in office should be enough.
Still, this unsettling new left-right alliance may signal something else.
Gaetz, Omar, and Ocasio-Cortez are in their 30s and 40s and seemingly want to burnish their reputations as lawmakers who are a new generation of politicians outside the Beltway.
What else might these folks start to agree on? When the young far left in America starts to join the far right, what comes next?
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – None dare call it hate. The recent horrific mass killing in Nashville is even more tragic when we understand who the killer was – and how the mass media has either ignored or downplayed her ‘trans’ identity.
Or has made it a point of calling her a man rather than a mentally ill woman.
It’s also tragic, no – outrageous – that none in the establishment media, or Joe Biden or anyone in his administration, has labeled the shooting a ‘hate crime’ even though it was.
Local law enforcement has called it a targeted attack against a Christian school.
The heavily armed 28-year-old mass murderer Audrey Hale who committed the massacre at Covenant School used two AR-style rifles and a pistol to kill three 9-year-old children and three adults.
Reportedly a former student, she was was killed by police.
Her ‘manifesto,’ discovered at her home, has still not been made public.
The killer was first reported correctly as a woman.
Then the media fell all over itself apologizing for its mistake and quickly began stealth editing its initial reports and started calling her a ‘transgender male’ (which in most cases is actually a female claiming to be male).
It is now mostly downplaying the trans issue and the fact that she was being treated for ’emotional’ issues.
And unlike the rhetoric often employed by Democrats after a shooter targets any minority community – like an LGBTQ club or killings simply in a neighborhood with a high number of Asian Americans – they aren’t calling this a ‘hate crime.’
The left is usually very quick to identify any crime it can committed by white conservatives, MAGA Republicans or Donald Trump supporters.
Sometimes it is valid. Most of the time it is not.
As my Georgetown roommate, and colleague, Quin Hillyer writes in the Washington Examiner:
The message is clear: The media will bend over backward to kowtow to transgender ideology when it benefits the gender bender yet will also do backflips to hide a transgender status if somebody might draw negative inferences. Too bad the media honchos aren’t concerned about contributing to inaccurate characterizations of conservative people as dangerous and unhinged.
First, let me be clear, most conservatives despise the ‘hate crime’ moniker because, well, a crime is a crime. Murder isn’t more of a murder because of the races or identities of the victims or perpetrators.
But if you are going to use the term and have it impact how cases are investigated, tried and suspects are sentenced, then call this what it was – a hate crime against Christians by a lunatic transgender person.
Federal law considers violence that causes bodily injury to a person to be a hate crime if it is motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.
Of course, the fact that this killer was ‘trans’ shouldn’t become the sole focus, nor should it be used to unfairly label other trans persons.
But it should be noted by the media and included in the entire process.
And the targeting of Christians by a trans person should be a major focus.
Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has opposed hate crime legislation in the past as too broad, quickly took action to ensure this anti-Christian hate crime perpetrated by a self-described transgender was treated as such.
He called on federal authorities Tuesday to investigate Monday’s massacre as a hate crime against Christian believers.
The New York Post reported:
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Hawley described Audrey Hale’s rampage through the Tennessee school that left three adults and three 9-year-old children dead as a “targeted” assault “against Christians” and called for “the full resources of the federal government” to be deployed to determine why the 28-year-old former student carried out the heinous crime.
“It is commonplace to call such horrors ‘senseless violence.’ But properly speaking, that is false,” Hawley writes. “Police report that the attack here was ‘targeted’ — targeted, that is, against Christians.”
“I urge you to immediately open an investigation into this shooting as a federal hate crime. The full resources of the federal government must be brought to bear to determine how this crime occurred, and who may have influenced the deranged shooter to carry out these horrific crimes.
Now, let’s see how Team Biden and the establishment media react.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is basically self-learning software (algorithms) that grows smarter over time using the entire world’s ever-growing library of data as its teacher. It can learn to do myriad complex tasks in a fraction of the time humans could.
It will revolutionize and upend entire economies, and dominate future warfare. It is also developing at an unprecedented rate.
Many are concerned AI will take away entire career fields and tens of millions of American jobs. AI advancements could eliminate up to 300 million jobs globally, according to Goldman Sachs.
Fox News reported: “Up to 30% of hours currently worked across the U.S. economy could become automated by 2030, creating the possibility of around 12 million occupational transitions in the coming years, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study.”
Others worry that it will make a few corporations extremely rich and powerful.
And then, many worry that Al may supersede human intelligence in just a few years and eventually make humans redundant.
Few would deny that whoever dominates AI may dominate the world. China certainly believes this and is forging ahead to become the world leader in AI.
The Pentagon is also looking closely at how it can use AI to more quickly make strategic or battlefield assessments and technologically leapfrog over our enemies.
But what about our government? Should it regulate AI?
Democrats tend to favor regulating everything. And they have shown the danger of doing so with social media. I recently wrote on how Joe Biden is already using executive power to weaponize Artificial Intelligence to be woke.
I noted that: “The American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a government watchdog group, recently warned that Team Biden is actively using the federal government’s vast power to regulate AI to promote a “woke” ideology in the basic architecture of this revolutionary, powerful, and dangerous new technology.”
“That ‘woke’ ideology promotes affirmative action under the guise of ‘anti-racism,’ and transgenderism as gender ‘equity.’”
And that is a huge concern.
Republicans tend to be more skeptical of regulation in general, especially in a dynamic, fast-moving technology that few lawmakers understand.
“Let a bunch of guys up here that are wearing JCPenney leisure suits that still have 8-track tape players in their ’72 Vegas start talking about technology, then you got some problems,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told Fox News when asked about regulation keeping pace with the AI sector.
“The problem with AI is that it’s advancing so fast,” Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina said. “It’s very difficult to regulate because you don’t know what the next thing is going to be.”
Republicans, like Burchett and Mace, also worry government regulation will stifle AI innovation and put the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage, especially vis a vis China.
“I don’t know that we need regulation,” Burchett said. “You want to stifle growth; you start putting laws on it.”
“If you overregulate, like the government often does, you stifle innovation,” Mace told Fox News. “And if we just stop AI, nothing is stopping China. We want to make sure that we are No. 1 in AI technology in the world and that it stays that way.”
But we may be losing that race. As Time reported:
“The country that is able to most rapidly and effectively integrate new technology into war-fighting wins,” Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, told lawmakers on a House Armed Services subcommittee. China is spending three times more than the U.S. on developing AI tools, Wang noted. “The Chinese Communist Party deeply understands the potential for AI to disrupt warfare, and is investing heavily to capitalize,” he said. “AI is China’s Apollo project.”
But Republicans in Congress aren’t doing anything to take away Biden’s power to regulate AI himself. And time is of the essence.
As a former Democrat Senator, Kent Conrad, and ex-Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss wrote recently in Fox News:
This comes at a pivotal moment. We are on the precipice of a new tech revolution—one in which a collection of next-generation capabilities—such as AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology—promise to fundamentally upend every facet of society.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – If you only followed establishment news, you would think that only former president Donald Trump is in a heap of legal trouble. Well, regardless of whether Trump’s legal woes are justified or a witch hunt by a weaponized Department of Justice (DoJ) and politicized local prosecutors, he isn’t the only president in increasingly hot water.
Whether it’s through his son Hunter, or by his own doing, Joe Biden is also facing what one congressman called an “inferno of allegations.”
Pennsylvania Republican and House Oversight Committee member Scott Perry said on a Newsmax TV interview on Thursday that where there’s smoke there’s fire, and Joe Biden has “gotten himself into an inferno of allegations and credible claims of influence peddling that seems like it’s filled with probable cause.”
Newsmax reported:
Perry made the comments on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” in a discussion about the president’s use of at least one email alias when he was vice president. The Oversight Committee has demanded that the National Archives turn over unredacted material related to the alias and its use that overlaps with Hunter Biden’s time in Ukraine.
“I think it’s really long past time where the Oversight Committee and the Congress itself to play hardball with these agencies that somehow think that this information that belongs to the American people somehow solely belongs to them as though it’s their personal possession,” Perry told Schmitt.
Joe Biden’s use of email aliases during his time as vice president is the latest bombshell to come from investigations into Hunter’s shady foreign business deals.
As the New York Post reported:
President Biden used at least three pseudonyms during his vice presidency to send messages to his son Hunter concerning both family and official government business — including meetings with Ukrainian leaders, emails found on the first son’s abandoned laptop show.
Then-Vice President Biden emailed Hunter under the aliases “Robin Ware,” “Robert L. Peters” and “JRB Ware” between 2014 and 2016, keeping his son abreast of scheduled talks with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Kyiv Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, among other communications The Post first revealed in 2021.
The elder Biden had one of his aides, John Flynn, send his daily schedule to the private email address “[email protected]” at least 10 times between May 18 and June 15, 2016, copying Hunter on a May 26 message with a note about an “8.45am prep for 9am phonecall [sic]
Biden had pressured Poroshenko five months earlier to fire Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the natural gas company Burisma Holdings, where Hunter earned roughly $1 million per year while serving on the board between 2014 and 2019.
Joe Biden also used the “JRB Ware” alias in 2016 to discuss plans for the Penn Biden Centerin Washington, DC, and where improperly kept classified material was found late last year.
The revelation of these Biden aliases has prompted House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to ask the National Archives to turn over unredacted records where Biden relied on the aliases when communicating with his son Hunter and his son’s business partners Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer.
Archer told the committee on July 31 that Joe Biden got on phone calls with his son’s foreign business associates nearly two dozen times.
Schwerin also visited the Old Executive Office Building to meet with then-Vice President Biden around the time the Obama-Biden administration was making big changes to US-Ukraine policy.
So, what should happen next? Well, Congressman Perry has an answer for that.
Newsmax quoted Perry as saying:
I think the subpoenas have to start. I think the impeachment inquiry is overdue again. We have probable cause. I think in any other criminal case instance right now that this would be completely fulfilling the probable cause requirement.
I think it’s our duty to ferret this out, so the American people know about their president, whether they can trust him or not.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz met with Panamanian officials about growing Communist Chinese influence over the Panama Canal, a crucial artery for global trade that was built and once controlled by the United States, until it was given away by liberal the-President Jimmy Carter.
Cruz announced in a statement he “recently traveled to Panama and underscored the Panama Canal’s strategic importance to the United States.”
Cruz reports he “met with top Panamanian officials, including the Minister of Economy and Finance, Felipe Chapman; Minister of Public Security, Frank Abrego; and Panama Canal Authority Administrator, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales. During these meetings, Sen. Cruz reiterated the growing threats posed by China and other foreign actors seeking to exert influence over the region, threatening both American and Panamanian national and economic security.”
“The Senate Commerce Committee has primary jurisdiction over the Panama Canal due to its role in the facilitation of global trade and U.S. commerce,” Cruz notes.
“There is undoubtedly a strong Chinese presence, and I believe a threat to the canal. The purpose of my visit is number one, to try to strengthen the longtime friendship and alliance between the United States and Panama. And number two, I’m the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which, among other things, has jurisdiction over the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal is vital, both to national security and economic security of the United States and Panama,” said Cruz.
Cruz summarized the long-brewing issue of Communist Chinese control of the Panama Canal and its threat to the United States, writing:
Previously, Sen. Cruz convened a Senate Commerce Committee hearing to examine the growing number of challenges facing the maritime industry in the region due to capacity limitations and increased transit fees. Sen. Cruz sounded alarms over China’s growing foothold in Panama, which poses a direct threat to U.S. trade. China has exploited Panama’s institutional weakness to evade U.S. sanctions and has taken controlling stakes in critical infrastructure surrounding the Panama Canal. During the hearing, multiple senators raised concerns about Panama’s management of the canal, citing allegations of corruption, suggesting that they may be violating the Neutrality Treaty.
One week after the hearing, a preliminary deal was announced that would give an American company primary control of Port Balboa and Port Cristobal, which are container ports on either end of the canal. However, the deal has faced delay amid pressure from China seeking to secure a stake in the deal, stalling progress to protect both American and Panamanian interests.
Sen. Cruz concluded, “China is not America’s friend, and China is not Panama’s friend, and if God forbid, a military conflict emerges between the United States and China, I believe there is an unacceptable risk that China would act to shut down the Panama Canal, which would have a devastating impact on the United States and an even worse impact on Panama…
“There is strong American interest in expanding and improving commerce and transportation through the Panama Canal. The United States built the Panama Canal more than a century ago and our nations have been close friends for a long, long time. The economies of both the United States and Panama benefit enormously from the Panama Canal, and there are strong American interests in investing in ports on both ends of the Panama Canal and assisting in new infrastructure, whether it is gas pipelines to transport gas from one end to the other, or whether it is building a new reservoir and expanding the ability to ensure there’s
ANALYSIS – China’s outrageous claim to almost the entire South China Sea – everything within a “nine-dash line” drawn on Chinese maps – has taken its most recent victim – the movie-viewing public in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government has banned the movie due to a scene with that Chinese-made line on a map.
China takes its illegal claim very seriously and strives to impose its visual representation on maps everywhere, including those appearing in Hollywood movies.
While it’s unclear why the soon-to-be-released film ‘Barbie’ about the iconic doll and her boyfriend Ken would get embroiled in international politics, it has.
This south China Sea has been a flashpoint between Vietnam and China for years. The artificial line is shown on Chinese maps to mark their claims over the area despite Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan claiming parts of the same vast expanse of sea.
Chinese warships and fishing vessels routinely operate in these waters to establish de-facto presence, often provoking clashes with neighboring countries.
The Daily Wire (DW) reported:
“We do not grant license for the American movie ‘Barbie’ to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,” Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Department of Cinema, a government body in charge of licensing and censoring foreign films, was quoted as saying in the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper.
The movie’s trailer shows Barbie leaving her perfect doll world and to explore the “real world” after becoming disillusioned with her life.
So why did a big Hollywood studio decide to include this ridiculous claim in their otherwise non-political movies?
All I can think of is – in order to please the communists in Beijing. China is obviously a far bigger market than Vietnam. And who knows if Chinese investors were involved in the movie’s production.
DW notes:
“Barbie” isn’t the first film banned for including the nine-dash line. The Vietnamese government also blocked the DreamWorks animated film “Abominable” (2019) and the action-adventure film “Unchartered” (2022) for the same reason. Netflix removed the Australian spy drama “Pine Gap” in 2021 for their inclusion of the line.
Hollywood blockbusters including the Marvel films “Eternals” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” have also been in China after directors or actors involved in the films made comments critical of China.
Another big controversy exploded in 2019 over the Tom Cruise movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ Initially the movie appeared to remove the flags of Taiwan and Japan from Maverick’s flight jacket. The flags were part of historical patches representing prior U.S. naval deployments to the region.
As NBC News reported:
In 2019, the trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick” showed Cruise’s character, U.S. Navy pilot Pete Mitchell, in the same bomber jacket he wore in the original film. But two of its flag patches — representing Japan and the Republic of China, the official name for Taiwan — appeared to have been replaced by other emblems.
The move was criticized at the time as an act of self-censorship to please China’s censors. Beijing sees Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy of 24 million people, as an inalienable part of its territory and lashes out at any reference to it as a sovereign nation.
In this case Hollywood, or Cruise, had a change of heart and reversed their apparent kowtowing to China. CHinese investors also pulled out of the movie.
NBC News continued:
On the film’s release last month after a two-year pandemic delay, both flags had been restored. At an advance screening in Taipei, the audience broke out in cheers and applause at the sight of the Taiwanese flag on the big screen, local news outlet SETN reported.
Sometimes in Hollywood the good guys do win. Sadly, not in the case of Barbie.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
