In this mailing: Giulio Meotti: China Buys Western Academics Amir Taheri: Cinderella Province in a Rebellious Mood China Buys Western Academics by Giulio Meotti  •  February 28, 2021 at 5:00 am       "The inaugural conference assured [everyone] that Tibet was never annexed, [and] that the Chinese intervention of 1950 had been requested by the Tibetans," Nicolas Nord, a law professor, recalled. [T]he proposed new head of the CIA, William J. Burns, said that if it were up to him, he would close Confucius Institutes in Western universities. Seventeen schools in the UK are already owned by Chinese companies, and that number is destined to skyrocket. In additon, The Times revealed that the University of Cambridge received a "generous gift" from Tencent Holdings, one of the largest technology companies in China involved in state censorship. Today, we know a lot about the Chinese cruelty, including the mass murder by the Wuham virus that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forced upon the world....resulting in the murder of more than 2.5 million. We also know about the number of people locked up in the laogai, the Chinese "administrative prisons" (estimate, 50 million).... "Places inhabited by ethnic minorities, such as Xinjiang and Tibet, have stood out as shining examples of China's human rights progress", Wang said hours before addressing the...United Nations Human Rights Council. Probably even the Soviet Union could not have thought that one up. Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a survivor of China's "re-education camps" in Xinjiang, recently revealed what happens there. "It is forbidden to speak Uyghur; it is forbidden to pray; it is forbidden to go on a hunger strike..." She had to defecate into a plastic bucket in front of the others. She was chained to her bed for 20 days. Pictured: "The Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center," a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, north of Kashgar in Xinjiang. (Photo by Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images) A shocking investigation was just published by the French weekly Le Point on how Beijing is buying the favor of Western universities. An Italian associate professor, for example, Fabio Massimo Parenti, at the Lorenzo de Medici International Institute in Florence, was hosted in Xinjiang, where up to two million Uyghurs are estimated to be locked up in "re-education camps". In addition, many British schools are now closely under Chinese radar of influence and propaganda. Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain's Reform UK Party, recently tweeted that "Chinese billionaires with direct links to the CCP are buying up British schools — and flooding the curriculum with their propaganda," and listed the names of some in the UK "under Chinese control": Continue Reading Article Cinderella Province in a Rebellious Mood by Amir Taheri  •  February 28, 2021 at 4:00 am       The mullahs had another reason to neglect the Baluch, a majority of whom are Sunni Muslims and deeply suspicious of a regime based on a militant Imamist ideology. During the past four decades, an accumulation of grievances has pushed the Baluch into a rebellious mood. According to a study by the Ministry of the Interior, almost 30% of the death sentences that make the Islamic Republic the second nation with the highest number of executions in the world, after China, are passed on the Baluch, who account for 1.8% of Iran's population. Tehran faces a cash flow problem that has also led to cuts in stipends for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar al-Assad. Arrogance, ignorance, and repression are the main features of Tehran's approach to what is a complex socio-politico-economic problem that requires understanding, compassion, and pragmatism, concepts that have no place in the mullahs' lexicon. Their ineptitude has turned Baluchistan into a powder-keg. Arrogance, ignorance, and repression are the main features of Tehran's approach to what is a complex socio-politico-economic problem that requires understanding, compassion, and pragmatism, concepts that have no place in the mullahs' lexicon. Their ineptitude has turned Baluchistan into a powder-keg. Pictured: Children wander in Adimi village in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan, on February 2, 2015. (Photo by Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images) "Like a battlefield!" This is how eye-witnesses describe the scene in Saravan after two days of violence on Monday and Tuesday during which an undetermined number of people lost their lives while local authorities briefly lost control of the city. Tehran says two people died and five others were wounded. Local reports put the number of dead at 37 with dozens more injured. Because of the credibility gap associated with the regime and its opponents, and in the absence of normal journalistic coverage, it is hard to be sure about the figures. It is equally hard to know how the violence started. Tehran says the starting shots came from Pakistani troops guarding the border that divides Iranian Baluchistan from the Pakistani one. The Pakistanis deny involvement and blame Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for causing the tragedy with excessive use of force. Continue Reading Article