Breitbart: Freedom House on Wednesday released the 2021 edition of its annual Freedom in the World report, charting an alarming “deterioration of democracy” around the world in 2020.

So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” Revelation 13:4

The report cited the “malign influence of the regime in China” as one of the most “profound” factors in the rising tide of authoritarianism.

Of course, the pandemic that swept out of China to destabilize the world was a major factor as well, and it was a powerful force multiplier for the identified malevolence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As the Freedom House report, subtitled Democracy Under Siege, put it:

The spread of the Wuhan coronavirus was accompanied by a matching spread of “excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and nonstate actors,” which is tantamount to saying the CCP’s worldview and ideology spread along with its virus. A growing number of ruling regimes took advantage of the coronavirus to “quash opposition and fortify their power,” and China is the world leader in exports for opposition-quashing tactics and technologies. Read More

Breitbart: The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed H.R. 1, otherwise known as the “For the People Act,” which Republicans warn will compromise election integrity and ultimately lead to the federalization of U.S. elections.

The Democrat-led House passed the legislation on party lines, 220 to 210. A summary of the bill notes that it “expands voter registration (e.g., automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (e.g., vote-by-mail and early voting)” and imposes limits on removing voters from voter rolls.

Republicans have warned that the Democrat legislation would vastly reduce the power of the states to control and operate elections at the local level.

“If this bill passes, it puts in all these terrible provisions,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said during a January appearance on Breitbart News Daily.

“It’s a federal micromanagement of the election process, and everything that folks on the left want to reduce the integrity [and] the security of the election process is in there,” he continued.

“If you’re a state like Alabama or Texas that has a voter ID law, you might as well forget it, Read More

Zero Hedge: China is currently signaling the world that it has mapped out its post-COVID ascent, but crucially it is now openly naming the United States as its biggest global obstacle.

Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. Revelation 16:12

Though Beijing and Washington now seem to have accepted their ongoing economic and financial rivarly as essentially commonplace across various industries, particularly tech and communications, as well as defense, a recent speech by President Xi Jinping upped the ante further, having as its central theme “the East is rising and the West is declining.” 

“The biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States,” Mr. Xi stated ultra-confidently in a speech that was published last week and recently translated. And according to an official cited in The New York Times as having been present at the speech, Xi said, “The United States is the biggest threat to our country’s development and security.” Read More