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Zero Hedge: Speaking virtually on the first day of Davos’ World Economic Forum on Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave his first major public address since Joe Biden entered the White House, tailoring his message toward calming tensions among global rivals and urging a return to “mutual respond” but also emphasizing Beijing is ready to forge its own path regardless.

Underscoring that nations must “abandon ideological prejudice” and immediately abandon a dangerous “Cold-War mentality” he called on world powers to “stay committed to international law and international rules instead of staying committed to supremacy.”

“Difference in itself is no cause for alarm, what does bring alarm is arrogance, prejudice and hatred,” Xi told the Davos Agenda event, following four years of the Trump administration’s anti-China policies which brought Sino-US relations to their lowest point in decades. “Confrontation will lead us to a dead end.” It should be noted that there’s previously little doubt that Davos attendees pretty much despised Trump, and now this year Xi of China’s Communist Party is opening the Davos agenda.

Xi’s main points: – World should abandon ideological biases, co-exist in peace and stop interfering in others’ domestic affairs – Sanctions and new cold wars only push the world towards confrontation – Vows support for WHO, WTO and Paris climate accord. Read More

President Joe Biden repealed a Trump-era executive order barring people who identify as transgender from serving in the military in most cases, as well as preventing military funding from paying for sex reassignment surgeries.

Biden’s executive order, which the White House announced on Monday morning, rescinds one Trump issued in 2017 and implemented in 2019.

The new executive order comes after the Senate confirmed Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, last week in a 93-2 vote. Austin was sworn into office on Friday, making him the first black man to hold the position of Secretary of Defense. During his confirmation hearing, Austin voiced support for rescinding the Trump administration ban on transgender people serving in the military.

“If you’re fit and you’re qualified to serve and you can maintain the standards, you should be allowed to serve and you can expect that I will support that throughout,” Austin said.

PJ Media: Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) raised the alarm about the Democrats’ disturbing crackdown on “domestic terrorism” in the wake of the Capitol riot on January 6. She warned that the domestic terror bill that House Democrats have proposed would “undermine our constitutional rights and freedoms,” and lead to law enforcement targeting “almost half of the country.”

“We don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said, ominously, in an interview with Fox News on Friday.

“When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this ‘unholy alliance’ of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians,” the former congresswoman noted.

Indeed, as PJ Media’s Paula Bolyard reported, Brennan named libertarians as part of the “unholy alliance” including “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, [and] nativists.” Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald warned that Brennan is suggesting using “the tools that they used to take ISIS off the internet, the tools they used to destroy al-Qaeda,” against political movements opposed to the Left.

Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate, echoed that warning. Read More

On Saturday, only three days after the inauguration of Joe Biden, the city of Seattle suddenly announced that vandals who destroy property during protests will be arrested and prosecuted more vigorously.

Seattle interim police Chief Adrian Diaz announced that the decision was made in coordination with City Attorney Pete Holmes, and enforcement would commence Saturday afternoon, the Seattle Times reported.

Diaz said of the rioters, “They’re focused on breaking windows, and these are things we need to work on,” adding that people who have been arrested “four or five times” for vandalism will be prosecuted more heavily. He asserted, “We will be prosecuting these crimes from now on. … When we don’t have any form of accountability for people — and many of them are coming from outside the city — they will continue to do that activity, and we can’t have that.”

“Diaz said police have arrested about 600 people for various incidents in riots or protests since last spring, and often misdemeanors haven’t been prosecuted,” the Seattle Times noted. Read More

On May 1, 2020, President Trump signed Executive Order 13920, “Securing the United States Bulk-Power System,” to prevent foreign adversaries from creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system.

“The bulk-power system is a target of those seeking to commit malicious acts against the United States and its people, including malicious cyber activities,” the executive order read. “Although maintaining an open investment climate in bulk-power system electric equipment, and in the United States economy more generally, is important for the overall growth and prosperity of the United States, such openness must be balanced with the need to protect our Nation against a critical national security threat.”

In December, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette issued a prohibition order “designed to reduce the risks that entities associated with the People’s Republic of China pose to the Nation’s bulk-power system” under Executive Order 13920, which took effect January 16, 2021—mere days before Biden’s inauguration.

On his first day in office, Joe Biden suspended Executive Order 13920 for 90 days as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.”

According to the order, “The Secretary of Energy and the Director of OMB shall jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.”

While it remains to be seen whether a replacement order will be issued, and whether a replacement would similarly protect Americas’s bulk-power system from being exploited by foreign adversaries, it’s still hard to understand why Trump’s executive order was suspended in the first place.

Was it simply an anti-Trump action or was it because of his son Hunter Biden?

As CNN reported last month, “After [Joe Biden] left office in 2017, Hunter Biden worked on securing a deal with CEFC China Energy to invest in US energy projects.” The deal fell through, but Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China may very well be a motive behind his father’s suspending Trump’s executive order. Recall that Joe Biden is on the record saying that “China is not our problem.” And he has repeatedly insisted that his son’s business dealings with Ukraine, while he was vice president and the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine, was not a conflict of interest.

While President Trump believed in “America First,” Joe Biden seems to believe in “China First.” Read More

Page Six: There are concerns about Katie Couric as a guest host of “Jeopardy!” after her “condescending, elitist” remarks that GOP and Trump supporters should be “deprogrammed.”

https://youtu.be/jU2orgLDALo

Read More