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In this mailing:
* Gordon G. Chang: China's CCP: World's Most Dangerous Transnational Criminal Organization
* Burak Bekdil: Brace for Another Tumultuous Five Years with Erdoğan


** China's CCP: World's Most Dangerous Transnational Criminal Organization ([link removed])
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by Gordon G. Chang • June 1, 2023 at 5:00 am
* What is the world's largest transnational criminal organization? At 96.7 million members, it is the Communist Party of China.
* Beijing's primary goal is rule — not domination — of Planet Earth and the near parts of the solar system.
* This expansive Chinese view has many implications, but one of them is that China's regime does not believe it is bound by the laws of the international community. China's regime, with this mentality, thinks that whatever it does by definition is within its right and therefore not criminal.
* There are in China, for instance, over 700 million surveillance cameras in its SkyNet system, about one camera for every two residents. Those devices are being connected to one centrally controlled system as the regime stitches together a nationwide social credit system to monitor every person in the People's Republic.
* Taxis and other vehicles also have government-installed cameras. The CCP has thought of everything. As a result, China is fast becoming totalitarian and a total surveillance state.
* The Communist Party cannot run such a state and claim it does not know what is going on.
* This means the CCP is responsible for the tens of thousands of Americans annually killed by fentanyl.... The result, Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution wrote, is "the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history."
* TikTok... which Beijing effectively controls, glamorizes drug use. Yes, the wildly popular app has community guidelines prohibiting videos promoting drug use, but you can find clips with millions of views teaching kids how to take illegal drugs.
* The Chinese gangs use burner phones and Chinese banking apps to move vast sums quickly, quietly, and securely through the Chinese state banking system. The Communist Party of China tightly controls all Chinese banks, and no one could transfer sums through their networks without the cooperation of the regime.
* "At its core, the People's Republic of China is focused on gaining geopolitical leverage over countries in Central and South America to be used in an eventual conflict with the United States." — Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society to Gatestone, May 2023
* These are just a few of China's crimes as detailed in Frank Gaffney's new book, The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party & Friends for Crimes Against America, China, and the World. Unfortunately, American law enforcement prosecutes individuals when it should be prosecuting the Communist Party of China instead.

What is the world's largest transnational criminal organization? At 96.7 million members, it is the Communist Party of China. The Chinese state is not only a dangerous international actor, it is also a criminal of the most powerful and insidious kind. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping attends during the China-Central Asia Summit in Xian, China on May 19, 2023. (Photo by Florence Lo/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

China's regime is trafficking illegal drugs, protected wildlife, and humans. It is laundering cash and participating in ransomware attacks. It steals intellectual property. The ruling group, as a matter of state policy, murders people for their organs.

The Chinese state is not only a dangerous international actor, it is also a common criminal. Perhaps we should say it is an uncommon or state criminal, the most powerful and insidious kind.

What is the world's largest transnational criminal organization? At 96.7 million members, it is the Communist Party of China.

The Obama administration's "Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime," issued in 2011, defines "transnational organized crime" as "self-perpetuating associations" operating transnationally "for the purpose of obtaining power, influence, monetary and/or commercial gains, wholly or in part by illegal means." These organizations protect themselves "through a pattern of corruption and/or violence."

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** Brace for Another Tumultuous Five Years with Erdoğan ([link removed])
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by Burak Bekdil • May 31, 2023 at 4:00 am
* Erdoğan, as he has always done since coming to power in 2002, did all that he could to use state resources and the media he controls to manipulate the voters both before the May 14 vote and before the second round.
* State officials who are bound by the constitution to stay neutral in politics joined Erdoğan's campaign, while blocking every opposition effort.
* When a journalist asked Erdoğan "How was this video recorded?" Erdoğan admitted that the video shown was fabricated, but still alleged PKK complicity in the Kılıçdaroğlu campaign.... In fact, the PKK circulated its own, original version; militants dancing and chanting and so on. At the election rally, Erdoğan showed a fabricated version showing Kılıçdaroğlu dancing and chanting with PKK militants.
* While Erdoğan will try to maintain a balanced policy between Russia and the West, he will be inclined to favor Russia to the point where he fears that Western sanctions will hammer Turkey's ailing economy.
* Putin will keep on drinking his champagne while rooting for his Turkish Trojan Horse in NATO. Turkey's relations with the EU, however, will remain in the deep freeze, where they have been for the past several years, with virtually no chance of reviving Turkey's process for EU membership.
* What will happen after [Erdoğan] has left the political stage? The Turks will most likely quickly elect another opportunistic Islamist leader -- another Erdoğan.

Secular Turks and Turkey's Western allies should brace for another five tumultuous years with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. What will happen after he has left the political stage? The Turks will most likely quickly elect another opportunistic Islamist leader -- another Erdoğan. (Photo by Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images)

The second round of Turkey's consequential presidential election on May 28 did not produce a surprise. Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, now in his third decade in power, won 52% of the national vote against 48% by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition leader. In the first round on May 14, Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu had won 49.5% and 45% of the vote, respectively.

A previous article summarized the result of the first round as a victory of nationalist identity politics over misery.

Erdoğan, as he has always done since coming to power in 2002, did all that he could to use state resources and the media he controls to manipulate the voters both before the May 14 vote and before the second round.

State officials who are bound by the constitution to stay neutral in politics joined Erdoğan's campaign, while blocking every opposition effort.

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