Hello! Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m you’re host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we’ll hear about how the Chinese Communist Party are a bunch of antagonists who think they can get away with anything. How American laws allow them to think that way, and who’s doing something about it. For example...(Not the Headlines)!

China now has Russia under its wing. So China thought it would be nice to team up with Russia and explore the sea along the Aleutian Islands of Alaska just to see what, if any, response they would get. It’s not the first time. Russia and China held military exercises off the coast of Alaska last year. According to a story in USA Today, an Alaska Senator called last year’s response “tepid.”

When it happened again last week, the U.S. response was a greeting by four Destroyers. Nobody crossed recognized international boundaries, but this is just one of the many ways China has reinforced their belligerence when it comes to respecting other countries around the world. China has become so flush with money from the West that they now have put themselves in a place where they think they can make the rules, or just not follow the rules, or, when it comes to America, use the rules to China’s advantage.

Holding military exercises in international waters may be provocative to some, but it’s certainly not the only thing the Chinese Communist Party is doing to infiltrate Western society. And they are infiltrating Western society in order to destroy it. China is using the freedoms we have in America and in other western nations to defeat them (us) from within, using our own laws and our own constitutions.

One example would be the Chinese police stations that have been discovered operating in American and European cities. China is literally enforcing their own laws in other countries. They set up police stations to spy on Chinese ex-patriots, follow former residents of China who now live here, and in some cases, encourage them through intimidation to return to China. In fact, much of the Chinese police state operating in the United States was comprised entirely of intimidation experts who would threaten Chinese citizens who were here to avoid some type of political prosecution until they returned to China to face the wrath of the government for doing something that Americans would consider a normal exercise of freedom. The Chinese Communist Party would also threaten the family members who remained in China in order to get a suspect to return.

The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t care about equality or racism or fairness of any kind. The Chinese Communist Party has enslaved the Uwegars, and will eventually eliminate any who they can’t re-educate. A Western country couldn’t possibly set up a police station in China. There are too many administrative steps that would have to get past the party minions for anything like that to occur.

The United States makes is easy for foreigners to infiltrate our country. Not only because of our laws, but also because the Biden administration doesn’t seem to care who’s here. The weak laws we have to begin with are even less useful when the administration won’t even enforce them. That’s led to the Chinese pushing the envelop, so to speak, to see how much they can get away with both legally and illegally.

Illegally, a Newsweek story tells of all the different countries in which China is operating it’s own form of law enforcement. Oh, but not just how many countries, but also how many stations in each country they could identify. Fifty-two counties were discovered to have some type of Chinese law enforcement or intimidation enforcement. By comparison, The Listening Tube has only been heard in 36 countries! Listed alphabetically, the list spanned from two stations in Argentina to four stations in the United States. Vietnam, Zambia, Ukraine and Sweden all had one, while the United Arab Emirates had two and the United Kingdom had three. There are probably more that have not yet been discovered. It’s clear the Chinese Communist Party has no intention of recognizing the sovereignty of any country. All countries around the world should reevaluate their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.

Legally, the Chinese Communist Party is allowed to create a company in America and use it to buy property. And they have. China and Chinese-linked companies are purchasing farmland in areas that are near military installations. So, why are military installations surrounded by farmland? Because certain types of military installations need to be in isolated areas. As it turns out, a lot of that isolated area is also farmland. Chinese-linked companies are buying it under the pretense of building feed mills or other job-creating industries that require buildings where spy equipment can be placed. All within American law. Except, of course, the spying part. Some of the companies scooping up American farmland can’t be directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party because they’re registered in the State of Delaware, where the actual ownership of a company can be kept secret. Nothing to see here. No laws are being broken.

At the same time, authorities in California found a biolab. The story counts as a Not the Headlines story because even though the lab was discovered in December of last year, we just found out about it in July. An August 9th story, that’s last week, about it by Olga Rodruguez for the Associated Press had the following headline: “An illicit, Chinese-owned lab fueled conspiracy theories. But officials say it posed no danger.” Once again, if you read the story instead of just the headline, you get a different understanding of what was really going on. The conspiracy theories cited in the headline were simply people trying to understand what they were hearing and seeing on the news. When NBC reports that the CDC found at least twenty infectious diseases represented in the warehouse, people are going to wonder what the hell is going on inside a Chinese-owned company right here in the United States. It’s not conspiracy theories, it’s genuine concern. Hey, don’t get me wrong. Chinese people are free to go to America and open a legitimate business, following U.S. and State and Local laws. But that’s not what this was. This company is said to be owned by a man who still lives in China, not an immigrant who’s just trying to earn a living in a free society. As for the officials who say it posed no danger, THAT was the concluding half of the headline justified by the the fact that California’s Department of Toxic Substances checked the water and air around the facility and found nothing that would be hazardous to the community. So, the AP headline wants you to believe everything is alright, and any horror stories you may hear about what was going on are just conspiracy theories. Anything you heard is wrong, and by using the words conspiracy theories in our headline confirms that. The headline also tries to confirm that there was no danger present, because the air and water around the lab were not polluted. All that confirms is that the facility was self-contained. Anything being moved in or out was done in such a way as to be undetected. Which is good, I guess, if what you’re moving in and out are infectious diseases. That doesn’t mean the public is safe.

So, why didn’t anybody tell the public of the potential danger when it was first discovered by the only full-time code enforcement officer in Reedley, California? Maybe the reason the lab moved into Reedley is because they have only one full-time codes enforcer. It’s clear whomever opened this lab didn’t want anybody to know it was there. The so-called company wasn’t registered with any governing authority. It wasn’t licensed to do business with the city or state. Reedley’s city manager says they were bad actors who moved in overnight, concluding that the company didn’t want anyone to know they were there. All of the people working there were Chinese, some of whom spoke broken English. Normally when a company opens in a new place, they not only register with the government, but also brag about how many jobs they’ll be creating, and how they’ll be a benefit to the community and how they plan to donate to local charities and how they should get tax breaks for even considering moving to your town. None of that happened here. Best I can tell is the place had been in operation since last October, and continued to operate as recently as March of this year. But we didn’t hear about it until July because city officials, according to the Associated Press, were “advised” or “nudged toward” or “told” or “ordered” or however you’d like to phrase it, to not tell the public.

Look, I believe there are certain things we don’t need to know, even though the government knows. We don’t all need to know how to build a nuclear bomb. Have we been visited by aliens from outer space? Don’t know, don’t care. If one were to knock on my door, I probably wouldn’t tell the government, so why should the government have to tell me? But this illegal, unregistered, un-regulated Chinese-owned bio laboratory was discovered by a lowly codes enforcer in December, investigated until it was raided in March, ceased operation, cleaned of any biohazardous material, and still kept secret until a newspaper called the Mid Valley Times wrote a story about it. How important is local journalism? Right there’s a prime example. Local politicians claim the gag order came from the FBI, and you don’t mess with the FBI if you’re a politician. They decide who becomes President, after all. Everybody who knew about the lab was told to keep quiet because it’s an “ongoing investigation.” Where have we heard that before? If Washington wants to keep a lid on something, all they do is claim they can’t comment because of an ongoing investigation. If a reporter ever asked, “Is the investigation related to the subject I’m asking about?” the answer would be, “no comment” and so around it goes until it goes away; forced out by the next news cycle.

But while the government would prefer the story just go away, the Associated Press found a writer who could sum up what was still under investigation. He would find a way to soften the blow by concluding nobody was in danger, and people were making up wild stories about an innocent Chinese man who had to put his stuff there because of a fire somewhere else. And it’s true, as far as we know, nobody died because of what was going on there. But the author of the AP story couldn’t help but point out what was referred to as “anti-Chinese sentiments that have existed in the United States for centuries” as a contributing factor of why Americans might be suspicious of an illegal, unregistered bio lab owned by a guy who lives in China that’s operating without any regulatory oversight. So, the AP is telling you that unless you heard it from them, anything your heard about an illegal laboratory in California is fiction, the government said there was no danger, and if you still have anymore questions, you’re a bigot. Sounds like it’s hard to decide the Associated Press is trying to appease more, the United States Government or the Chinese Communist Party. Make no mistake. No Chinese businessman still living in China is doing business in the United States without a benefit to the Chinese Communist Party.

Ironically, it may have been the Chinese Communist Party that pointed out the lack of regulatory oversight labs like this have in the United States. Regardless of what they were doing, a group of Chinese people were operating an illegal enterprise on American territory. The American government didn’t want word to get out.

Let’s go back liner

1888

An audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord”, one of the first recordings of music ever made, is played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison’s phonograph in London. When word got back to the the United States that Edison was demonstrating his phonograph in London, a young Donald Trump said, “Well, ask anybody...you can do great things in America. That’s what America’s all about. You invent something in America, the whole world benefits.”

A still young, but slightly older Joe Biden said, “Oh, yea. The lost chord. I can’t remember what it was, but it sounded great the first time.”

The 1900’s China edition

1900

The Eight-Nation Alliance occupies Beijing, in a campaign to end the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China. So, who were the Boxers? Their official name, in English, was the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. How’s that for a cool political party name? Since it’s an early 20th century society, you might picture a group of people in tuxedos and top hats. Well, maybe not in China. Anyway, if they were wearing tuxedos and top hats, they could still punch you in the face without you ever seeing it coming. That’s because the Boxers were mostly men who practiced the martial arts. Back then, the martial arts was commonly known in English as Chinese Boxing. Besides being expert fighters, the Boxers were also anti-foreigner and anti-Christian. They went on a rampage of destroying foreign-owned property like railroads, and murdering Christians. A Chinese civil war began. An eight-nation alliance was formed by America, Austro-Hungaria, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian troops. When they showed up, they were repelled by the Chinese imperial army, which would rather fight the Boxers on their own than have foreigners help them win. Well, that only prompted the alliance to bring 20,000 more soldiers to the fight. Once the alliance took Beijing, or as it was called then, Peking, the Boxers and their government supporters were executed. For ending the war, the alliance demanded that foreign troops be stationed in Beijing, and the allied countries split more than 50 million pounds of silver over the next 39 years. So, what did the United States do with our share of the silver? Wikipedia says we used a large portion of it to pay for the education of Chinese students in American universities. What’s more, America created a program in China to teach students English to prepare them for studies in America.

1937

Chinese Air Force Day: The beginning of air-to-air combat of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in general, when 6 Imperial Japanese Mitsubishi G3M bombers are shot down by the Nationalist Chinese Air Force while raiding Chinese air bases. Although war had not been declared, China and Japan had been fighting for about a month. At that time, Beijing was called Peiping.

1945

Puyi, the last Chinese emperor and ruler of Manchukuo, is captured by Soviet troops. This guy was Emperor or China three different times, beginning when he was two years old. The first reign began in 1908 and lasted just 4 years. His last reign was from 1932 until 1945, but he was under the thumb of Japan at the time. This man led a life of extreme ups and downs. He was imprisoned as well as ruler. The Chines dynasties would end with him, leading to the communist government China has today. Puyi wrote about his life in a book called From Emperor to Citizen, and there was also a movie made about him called The Last Emperor.

1961

The German Democratic Republic closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants’ attempts to escape to the West. Eventually, a wall would be built around the Western section of the city. The British, American and French sectors of Berlin would become known as West Berlin. Surrounded entirely by Soviet-controlled East Germany, it was once referred to by Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev as a “bone in the Soviet throat.” The Berlin Wall would lead to the Berlin Airlift, which was a feat of modern engineering, logistics and will-power unlike the world had ever seen. Berlin was an occupied city from the end of World War II until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. I was proud to be a part of that bone, and a very public one at that. Being a personality on American Forces Radio and Television in West Berlin in the mid 1980’s was an honor and thrill of a lifetime. Knowing I was the public voice of America thumbing it’s nose at the Soviet Union brought me great satisfaction. Entertaining the people of West and East Berlin was a wonderful experience.

1961

Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall. You may have seen the iconic photograph by Peter Leibing of Schumann in the act of simultaneously shedding his rifle while leaping over barbed wire. I wonder what ever happened to that guy…

Look that up liner

As soon as he leaped into West Berlin, he was whisked away in a police van. He spent 30 years living in fear that the East German Stasi would hunt him down and kill him. During that time, he moved from Berlin to West Germany, settling in Bavaria. He met a nice girl and got married. He worked at a winery and an Audi car factory, according to wikipedia.

He once said that he only truly felt free after the fall of the wall he was guarding when he fled. His new found freedom was met by disappointment. After Germany was again unified, he returned to the east to visit relatives there, but his presence wasn’t wanted. His family saw him as a traitor. I’m not surprised. The communist propaganda machine was very persuasive. His family members may not have even realized they were being held captive. On the other hand, maybe they knew, and were jealous of him for spending the last three decades as a politically free man. Unfortunately, being spurned by his family led to depression. Thirty-seven years after leaping to freedom, he hung himself in his orchard. He may have been the last person killed crossing the Berlin wall, but it was also this week in

1962

East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin becoming one of the first victims of the wall. Unlike Conrad, Peter didn’t make it. I would have been able to look up what happened to him, too. But that’s not the end of historic events related to the Berlin Wall that happened this week in history. It was in...

1989

Several hundred East Germans cross the frontier between Hungary and Austria during the Pan-European Picnic, part of the events which began the process of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

And now, back to….

China edition!

2005

The first-ever joint military exercise between Russia and China, called Peace Mission 2005 begins. Military exercises between Russia and China being called Peace Mission is like calling the Inflation Reduction Act the Inflation Reduction Act.

Phone and email liner

Back in February of 2022, the second episode of The Listening Tube was titled “China Edition.” I was really just the events of the time that inspired me to write and talk about what I was witnessing. I don’t remember what I said, but I’m sure I have the transcript somewhere. Feel free to go back through the Listening Tube and hear for yourself. As I explained in the Pilot episode, I believe news is information the public wants or needs to know. We’re not being told enough about China’s aspirations, let alone what’s being done to maintain America’s role as the world leader.

Since that second episode, a lot more has happened. Somebody in Montana spotted what turned out to be a Chinese spy balloon. Although it was spotted in the American Northwest, it was allowed to traverse the width of the continent before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean. In hindsight, I’m kinda surprised it didn’t have the logo of one of the Biden family shadow businesses on the side of it.

Domestically, China continues its human rights abuses against the Yiegeurs because of their religion, breaking their promise to keep Hong Kong independent, and using their natural resources, specifically rare minerals, to blackmail foreign countries into moving manufacturing operations to the Chinese mainland.

Diplomatically, President Trump began the crackdown on China’s behavior after meeting with the Chinese leader. China’s human rights abuses, broken promises, stealing of intellectual property and computer-hacking operations are all signs of China’s indifference to the rules of human decency. At the same time, China expects everybody else to tip-toe around their strange obsession with Taiwan. Whenever their lawbreakers are caught in other countries, they retaliate, as if nobody from China can be held accountable for their actions; like they have diplomatic immunity.

When it comes to trade, China has been cheating since President Nixon opened the door to trade with China. They sell much more than they buy, leading to trade deficits. The government subsidizes the industries, providing an unfair advantage, and their workers are paid an unfair wage at jobs that are little more than slavery for millions of people in giant factories, pumping out products that are vacuumed up by the rest of the world. Yet anytime the United States tries to level the playing field with taxes or tariffs, the Chinese retaliate and threaten.

Speaking of Chinese manufacturing, that’s where most of the world’s fentanyl supply originates. Yes, the fentanyl that’s coming across our southern border in quantities that can kill millions of people comes from China. Some people call our relationship with China right now as a cold war. It isn’t a cold war when one side is already killing people on the other side. That’s exactly what China is doing with a willing partner in the Mexican drug cartels that now run the border between Mexico and the United States. It’s sad that drug cartels have more organizational skills than the governments on each side of the border. China’s drug industry is doing what their army doesn’t have to. An Arizona Sheriff was just on TV the other day saying fentanyl kills more than 290 people a day, including children. Most of them don’t even know they’re taking fentanyl. They’re not overdosing, they’re being poisoned. What’s adds to the disaster is that both China and Mexico are making money from the deaths of Americans. Judging by the lack of effort the current American administration is putting toward stemming the flow of what’s killing hundreds of Americans a day, it would appear they’re okay with it. China’s not doing anything illegal, as far as I know. The Mexican cartels certainly are. Well, one thing that could be done is create a blockade on Mexico’s western ports, and inspect every ship that wants in for fentanyl. If it’s found, it’s confiscated. Simple as that. Cut off the supply between the manufacturer and the distributor. Make a show of it. To hell with any international rule or law that may prohibit it. Send a clear message that America will not tolerate our citizens being poisoned by the hundreds every day. If President Biden had any guts when it comes to China, it would have already happened. Just as Kennedy put a blockade around Cuba, Biden should put a blockade around the ports that are bringing fentanyl from China. We’ve already lost tens of thousands of citizens in this undeclared war. Cold war my ass. We’re at war and we don’t even know it.

Maybe that’s why China felt perfectly comfortable setting up their own police departments in American cities. To them, it’s probably not much more than prep work for when the own the place. In the meantime, keep the employees busy by keeping an eye on Chinese ex-pats who are just trying to live a normal life in the land of the free. That’s not all, though. These Chinese police stations are seeking out people whom the Chinese Communist Party may want to speak with, for one reason or another. They try intimidation tactics to get them to return to China, or outright trickery. The police stations themselves were written off by the Chinese embassy as nothing more than a place to get your Chinese driver’s license renewed or other tasks. While I’m sure they were equipped to do that, since if you’re a Chinese person living in the United States, the CCP certainly has a file on you, and so do these overseas police stations they’ve created. While these Chines police stations were found in cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, cities that have Chinatown sections, they were also discovered in places like Nebraska and Minnesota. Oh, but America isn’t the only target of Chinese police stations. A story in American Military News quotes an organization called Safeguard Defenders as saying they’ve documented more than a hundred of them in dozens of countries. They all have direct links to the Chinese Communist Party. They’re in America to try to enforce Chinese law. Not our laws, not the Geneva Convention, but their own laws, in another sovereign country. That’s how bold the Chinese Communist Party is. They don’t care. They have their goals and objectives, and they’ll run roughshod over anything that gets in their way. Be it laws or rivers or mountains.

As for farmland, they won’t run roughshod over it, they’ll buy it. Or try to buy it. Especially if it’s near an American military base. For transparency’s sake, according to a website called gpb dot org, which is associated with PBS and NPR, foreign governments do not directly own land in the United States. But companies based in foreign countries do. The difference between Canadian Companies owning American Farmland and Chinese Companies owning American farmland is that all Chinese companies answer to the Chinese Communist Party. If the CCP wants to put a listening station in your poultry warehouse, they will. Canadian companies own more American land than any other, most of it for timber and farming. Eighty percent of Chinese-owned land is because a Chinese company own Smithfield Foods. I just bought some Smithfield bacon earlier today. When it comes to Chinese bacon, I don’t like all those different varieties like smoked this and smoked that. Or thick cut. I prefer my Chinese bacon from Smithfield to be plain old bacon, regular cut. Why is that so hard, Zi Zingping? You are the guy in charge, right?

But terra firma isn’t where this story ends. No, I’m not talking about the artificial islands China is building the the South China Sea so they can claim more territorial waters, or the island they’re building off the coast of Indonesia, which will attempt to make Chinese currency the standard instead of U.S. currency. No, I’m talking about space. Well, I should probably be more specific. There may be vast resources on the Moon, including water. As it stands right now, only America has landed people on the moon. Then we stopped. Now, we want to do it again, and so does Russia and China. Why? Well, each of those countries may have different motives. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will set their space program back decades, and maybe America’s, too, because of all the money we’re spending to help. Who’ s not losing money on the war in Ukraine? China, that’s who. Oh, and they now have aspirations of landing people on the moon. America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, has been paying attention, and the administrator there, Bill Nelson, thinks it would be in America’s best interest to get our asses in gear. My words. Not his. A shout out to another Bill who works for NASA for sharing this story with me. Thanks, Bill! And stop monitoring my keystrokes! Anyway, the Bill who’s boss says, “I don’t want China to get to the south pole first with humans and then say: this is ours, stay out.” The story by Victor Tangermann also quotes the top administrator as saying, “If we indeed find water in abundance there that could be utilized for future crews and spacecraft, we want to make sure that’s available to all, not just the one that’s claiming it.”

In other words, just as the Antarctica is without a single sovereignty, the moon should be, too. What we find there will be the subject of many debates if America gets there again first. Otherwise, there may be no debate at all. If China gets there first, a decision will be made to China’s advantage, and that decision may be final.

America’s goal is to get back to the Moon in 2025. The risks and safety precautions require slow and methodical testing. Even the slightest malfunction can set the program back weeks or months.

While China’s culture has had centuries of patients to get to this moment in time, they also don’t adhere to the strict guidelines of safety that America does. They also have learned how to fast-track projects when needed.

Scanners are circling the Moon to see what may lie beneath the surface and where. If valuable elements and minerals are detected, the space race will shift into another gear.

America and other western countries have made China a very wealthy country. The wealth is tightly controlled by a select few. Especially when that select few have control of a billion people.

If China wants to reach the moon before America, they might be able to do it. Of course, they would have to steal American technology to do it, but that’s just standard Chinese protocol. But, if push comes to shove, I have another way China can reach the Moon before America. You see, the moon is on average 238,855 miles from Earth. The average person in China is 5.568 feet tall. That means that if China simply ordered 266,500,431 people to stand on each other’s shoulders to create a human ladder, they could reach the moon. That would leave them with three-quarters of a billion people to cheer them on.