David Foster:

I wondered too. Planning is not the same as executing.

However, the Soviet military was battle-hardened, already in Eastern Europe and relatively intact compared to the forces of Western Europe. The European resistance movements against the Nazis were in large part communist, plus as the quote pointed out, the communist parties were strong in France and Italy.

I don’t believe an exhausted, internally divided Europe could have fought off the Soviets unless the US was willing to fight a third world war across the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s a great What if? Fortunately, we did have the atomic bomb.

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2023/08/06/chinese-owned-bio-lab-update-million-dollar-mice-fake-bankruptcy-recalled-covid-19-tests-ppp-loans-and-tax-credits-n787238

4. Fresno County officials were quite helpful
When UMI moved 45 miles up California Highway 99 from Tulare to Fresno in 2019, company officials had lots of praise for the county and the government programs they were hooked up with.
…
Since the news of what was found in the “lab” broke, Fresno County officials have been under fire, with some alleging they didn’t act quickly enough when they knew of safety violations at the UMI’s former location in Fresno and when suspicions of something illegal happening in Reedley were reported. Could this relationship have impacted officials’ willingness to look into things?

4. $150,000 in forgiven PPP loans
…
We are currently investigating how many related corporate entities received PPP loans and if they were forgiven since we know that other California businesspeople with links to China have been criminally charged for PPP fraud after setting up shell corporations during the pandemic.

5. Bankruptcy? What bankruptcy?
In the original story, the PBI representative claimed that UMI went into bankruptcy proceedings and that as the largest creditor, they were protecting the assets (mice, etc) by moving them to the Reedley facility for storage. However, no bankruptcy filings – not a single document – have been found after an exhaustive search of United States Bankruptcy Court records.

PBI claims that they had loaned millions of dollars to UMI so they “had to be” UMI’s largest creditor, and as such simply took possession of UMI’s assets. According to court documents and emails between Fresno County inspectors, though, there is no listing of that property or valuation, as would occur in an actual bankruptcy case.

What has been found is expensive litigation. In the federal courts, there’s a $2.2 million judgment against UMI out of Louisiana (Sensiva Health, LLC vs. Universal Meditech, Inc., et al), and a pending case in Alabama brought by Valor Distribution, a company that distributed UMI-produced COVID-19 tests that were later recalled by the FDA. In California, UMI is being sued by its former attorney, its former Realtor, and its former landlord for unpaid bills.

6. Shady County Inspections History
In 2019 UMI moved from Tulare to Fresno, but in August 2020 there was a fire, which was later deemed electrical, at that facility. Even though there were violations found that contributed to the fire, such as non-permitted electrical work and lab wall structures, county officials didn’t hold the company’s feet to the fire as they should have.
…
When UMI moved, they didn’t tell the county that they were allegedly in bankruptcy proceedings.

They’re currently trying to reopen in a new building; Fresno County officials have said no so far.

7. A maze of corporations, one based in China
Numerous corporations in Nevada, California, Colorado, and Canada are related to the labs and their officers:
…
In addition, a property management company that owns the building UMI once occupied in Tulare is owned by Chinese nationals linked to the laboratory and its related corporate entities. And, there are related corporations in Canada.
…
8. Ongoing criminal investigation
Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba told Your Central Valley that a federal criminal investigation is ongoing, and Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA), who represents Reedley, is pushing to ensure that federal officials, including the FBI, are involved and perform a complete investigation. He got involved back in March when Zieba called his office, frustrated by “the inability to get anyone to be accountable either at the county or the state level.”

I wouldn’t bet on it.
Democrat administrations seem to specialize in playing both sides of a war.
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2023/07/how-us-foreign-aid-to-iraq-funds.html

In 2020 and 2021, the United States spent over $600 million on foreign aid in Iraq. That’s down from a high of over $2 billion in 2018 and $4.4 billion in 2016. But it still means that we have blown through over $10 billion on Iraq since 2016. That’s long since we officially withdrew.

Meanwhile, where was Iraq’s money going? Iraq’s latest budget dedicates $2.8 billion to Shiite PMU terror militias including Kataeb Hezbollah: an Iran-backed terror group that has been responsible for the deaths of numerous American soldiers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19867/iran-russia-evade-sanctions

The Biden Administration also tried to deny that it had issued another waiver to Iraq to pay $500 million to the Iranian regime. According to a report by the Free Beacon, the waiver was issued “a day after Biden administration officials denied Iran’s claims that the United States had paved the way for Tehran to receive the $500 million.”

The regime will most likely use the funds to further arm and assist Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, to brutalize its own citizens, to undermine US national security interests, to fund its terrorist and militia groups across the Middle East and to expand more deeply into Latin America.

There are many posts about different ways American is funding China, which has been done by both parties, but this is almost farcical.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/reedley-chinese-covid-lab-received-tax-credit-of-360000-from-gov-newsoms-go-biz/

At the epicenter of current controversy, an illegal California lab run by a Chinese biotech firm, Prestige Biotech, was recently discovered in a warehouse in Reedley, California.
…
As recently discovered, Prestige Biotech is registered in the State of Nevada, but unlicensed to conduct business within the State of California. Code enforcement officials from the City of Reedley spoke to Xiuqin Yao, President of Prestige Biotech, as identified via emails and court documents. Ms. Yao informed authorities that the company was the largest creditor of Universal Meditech (UMI), Inc. which filed for bankruptcy. UMI had been relocated from the City of Fresno to the Reedley warehouse following an electrical fire…“Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents.”

A document released on March 24, 2019 by Governor Newsom’s Office of Business and Economic Development, a California Competes tax credit allocation agreement of $360,000 was cemented with UMI.*

om:

Well, the two guys, Michael Sherwin and Kai Bird, who wrote the book Nolan based his “Oppenheimer” film on, were lefties with deep ties to “The Nation” magazine.
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Sherwin served on the board of The Nation, to which he was a regular contributor.[8] While a professor at Princeton University, he taught and mentored Katrina vanden Heuvel, now editor-in-chief of The Nation.[8]

–wiki
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As far as I know, “The Nation” is still the premier leftist publication in America.

When he planned to go see the Christopher Nolan movie Oppenheimer, Steve Byrne was shocked to learn from his mother that, when she was an infant in the 1940s, her family had been living in Hiroshima. Echoing Bill Whittle’s post that Over one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing, the conservative-leaning comedian (who is of Korean, not Japanese, heritage) intoned: “Some real perspective. If not for the leaflets dropped by US Armed Forces… I absolutely would not be here today.” Upon reading those leaflets, her parents had fled the city, into a tunnel or a shelter in the mountains, and were outside the city on the day the atomic bomb was dropped…

https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2023/08/hiroshima-1945-didnt-atomic-bombs.html
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I suppose one can discount those leaflets, since they were dropped over 35 cities, not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a psyop to disrupt Japan’s war effort for a minimal expense.

I’ve forgotten, if I ever knew them, the specifics of that decision. It’s quite possible the US was keeping its options open on all those cities, as well as preventing a focused Japanese anti-aircraft defense for the chosen target.

I’m glad those leaflets saved some lives.

That doesn’t fit the subtext of the Oppenheimer movie.

Zoot alours!

Thanks for the tip and link to the No Parasan! article.

No Pasaran! — the French blog with a Spanish name and an avatar mash-up of Che Guevara and Mickey Mouse — has an explosive post containing this quote:
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…a meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy [after defeating Germany], a General Shtemenko later told Beria’s son. The Red Army offensive was to be combined with a seizure of power by the local Communist Parties. In addition, Shtemenko explained, ‘a landing in Norway was provided for, as well as the seizure of the straits [with Denmark]. A substantial budget was allocated for the realization of these plans. It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralysed by their colonial problems. The Soviet Union possessed 400 experienced divisions, ready to bound forward like tigers. It was calculated that the whole operation would take no more than a month

—“Hiroshima 1945: Didn’t the Atomic Bombs Prevent the Red Army from Sweeping through Western Europe and the Entire Continent from Falling Under Stalin’s Iron Fist?”
https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2023/08/hiroshima-1945-didnt-atomic-bombs.html
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Noam Chomsky’s line on Hiroshima was that the US wasn’t interested in ending WW2 so much as demonstrating America’s power to the Soviets for the post-WW2 world.

So in a way Chomsky was correct. Truman ended the war and he stopped genuine Soviet plans to expand in Western Europe.

ee is alarmed that the sky is falling, again? Note a quote from the article:

“…The incident marks an improvement in the U.S. response compared to a similar event the previous summer in which the Chinese and Russian navies maneuvered off the Alaskan coast. ….”

So the USN may be doing better this summer? But undoubtably, it is a low bar, last summer’s response. If only e e could share his thoughts.