Commentary

Recent discussions between journalists and Taiwanese authorities helped generate some interesting conversations and potential new pathways for positively changing the dynamics of cross-strait tensions.

There has been a pathway of greater frankness toward China, which started after the July NATO summit communique holding the Chinese regime to account for its role as the key enabler of Russian aggression in Ukraine. China took great umbrage to being called out.

During the week of Sept. 9, the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted 11 international journalists for a week-long gathering to receive briefings from different Taiwanese government ministries and think tanks.

This was a unique opportunity for journalists to engage deeply and broadly with Taiwanese centers of governance and influence that are not regularly accessible to non-Taiwanese journalists. It was also an opportunity for journalists to provide observations and feedback to the Taiwanese government and the think tanks that are influential in developing Taiwanese policy.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

All viewpoints are personal and do not reflect the viewpoints of any organization.

This article first appeared in Epoch Times and was reprinted with permission.

The post John Mills: A Way Forward on Taiwan? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The sheriff of the Arizona border county Vice President Kamala Harris visited on Friday had a good reason for talking up a message of conciliation before Harris arrived.

After all, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels knows Harris could well be the next president of the United States.

But for the Harris presidential campaign, and any American who follows the news, the “welcome” Dannels extended had to come across as pretty rough — because nothing really hurts like the truth.

Dannels told the U.K.’s Daily Mail that he was glad to see Harris visiting as at least a step in the right direction.

“If we’re not engaging, we’re not talking, we can’t solve it,” Dannels said, according to the Daily Mail. “So that’s why it’s good that she’s coming, it truly is.”

But he also planned to give her a letter detailing the tragedies the open-border policies Harris has inflicted on the country as part of President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Number one, she is still our sitting vice president,” Dannels told the Daily Mail. “Number two, if she is elected as president, hopefully this will be a foundation that she’ll remember, because I want to share our tragedies, I want to share our reality to her,’ he said.

“I have a letter I’m going to give her when I meet her off she comes off the plane today.

“But the reality is setting all that aside to meet with her. [If] she gets elected, and then she does nothing to fix it. She can’t say she didn’t know about it.”

That’s putting it gently, of course. If Harris doesn’t know about the problems illegal immigration is causing, it’s because she doesn’t want to know about them.

And judging by news coverage of her trip, she didn’t learn much.

According to The Associated Press, Harris visited with local officials — including Dannels — then made a speech that sounded like it could have been given by Barack Obama back in 2012 — a decade before the onslaught of the Biden-Harris immigration invasion.

“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said, according to the AP. “We can and we must do both.”

That’s the kind of pablum only the most committed progressives can swallow.

Prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, his predecessor, Donald Trump, was well on the way to securing the border and had obtained the cooperation of the government in Mexico for a system that was “orderly, safe and humane.”

That was the system the Biden-Harris administration blew up. And Dannels can’t help but remind Harris of that.

Now, when it comes to welcoming gifts, a letter — a written record of the faults of the Biden-Harris administration in one hard-hit area of the country — is not exactly a bottle of wine and a dozen roses.

And there’s no doubt the Harris advance team and her political advisers saw Dannels’ statements as nothing but public sniping by a Republican who has previously been publicly scathing about Biden-Harris policies.

But if the atmosphere was poisoned by Dannels’ comments, Harris has only herself and her administration to blame.

The illegal immigration crisis foisted on the country has been a disaster since the beginning of the Biden administration — and it’s one that Harris’ Democratic Party embraces, even as it devastates Democratic-run cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston.

But its first and worst impacts were in the border counties — where lawmen like Dannels and other local officials have been forced to deal with it ever since.

Reminding Harris of that might make for a rough welcome, no matter how gently it’s put in public.

Because when it comes to the modern version of the Democratic Party, the truth tends to hurt — badly.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Sheriff Gives Kamala Harris a Rough Welcome as She Arrives in Embattled Border State Arizona appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Tampon Tim attended the Michigan-Minnesota game on Saturday in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Football fans waited out in the rain to boo Tampon Tim at the game.

Michigan Fans Wait in the Rain to Boo Tampon Tim at Big House on Saturday

Tim Walz wore his Army Special Forces hat at the Big Ten football game today.

Here is the Army Special Forces emblem.

And here is Tim Walz in his Army Special Forces hat.

Via Amuse: Walz has never been in the unit and he's been asked repeatedly to quit wearing the hat and pretending like he was Army Special Forces.

This guy is too much.

Tampon Tim was also caught grabbing his sack on camera.

At least it makes him smile.

Video via Johnny MAGA.

Watch what Tim Walz did in front of students today in Michigan pic.twitter.com/98ac6FK1Cz

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) September 28, 2024

The post Tampon Tim Wears His Stolen Valor Cap at Michigan Game – Grabs His Sack for the Cameras appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Arizona sheriffs are causing a political firestorm by refusing to enforce a proposed state law that would criminalize illegal crossings at the Arizona-Mexico border.

Proposition 314, set to appear on November’s ballot, seeks to empower local authorities to arrest and prosecute migrants who enter the U.S. illegally.

According to the Arizona legislature’s website:

Proposition 314 would establish criminal penalties against a person who is not lawfully present in the United States and who submits false documentation when both applying for public benefits and during the employment eligibility verification process. An entity that accepts public benefits applications would have to verify the person’s identity by using a federal verification database.

Proposition 314 would make it a class 2 felony for a person to knowingly sell fentanyl if the person knows that the drug being sold contains fentanyl, that the fentanyl was not lawfully manufactured or imported into the United States and that the drug caused the death of another person.

Proposition 314 would establish state crimes related to entering this state from a location that is not a lawful port of entry or not complying with an order to leave this state.

These sheriffs, who oversee counties along Arizona’s southern border, are citing everything from “budgetary concerns” to accusations of “racism” as reasons for not enforcing the new law.

David Hathaway, sheriff of Santa Cruz County, a border region home to one of the largest ports of entry, made the audacious claim that enforcing the law would be “racist,” according to The Guardian.

“It would be ridiculous for me to go up to practically every single person in my county and say, ‘Let me see your papers, I need to check your immigration status’,” said Hathaway.

It’s not just Democrats like Hathaway shirking their duties. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, also a Democrat, declared he would refuse to enforce the law if passed.

Chris Nanos echoed Hathaway’s sentiments, warning that enforcing the new law would lead to “racial profiling.”

The real question is: since when did enforcing the law become optional?

Nanos argues that it would be too expensive for his department to arrest and detain illegal migrants.

“If I book a migrant in my county jail, I’m paying for those costs without any funding from the state,” said Nanos.

“Who wants to do this silly law with no funding from the federal government? But here’s another caveat that I’ve seen for a couple of decades: the federal government on the border doesn’t have enough courts, therefore they don’t have enough judges, they don’t have enough attorneys.”

“I’m not going to allow my deputies to be on that border, to arrest people, to book them in our jail when we have a federal government that has that responsibility. They should have solved it years ago. And now they have an opportunity to do real legislation in Washington, DC that says, ‘hey, we need to redo our immigration policies’ … the problem today is that Washington will never resolve it.”

The Guardian reported:

The Biden administration in June issued a new directive to curb high levels of migration into the US, which led to a dramatic decrease in unofficial border crossings in the following months.

The Cochise county sheriff, Mark Dannels, said: “I understand the spirit and the intent behind Proposition 314. And I think it will pass because the majority of the citizens in this state want a change.”

However, Dannels, a Republican, added: “Will I enforce the law? That’s like saying I’m not going to enforce DUI [driving under the influence] laws because I just don’t believe in that. No, you have to enforce the will of the people. I and other sheriffs are just trying to prepare ourselves before it passes because we don’t have infrastructure. We don’t have the funding, we don’t have the personnel.”

Meanwhile, in Yuma county, on the western end of the Arizona-Mexico border, the sheriff, Leon Wilmot, declined to speak with the Guardian. But at an earlier stage of the law’s passage through the legislature, Wilmot, a Republican, told a local ABC News affiliate that: “It will break the budget. And our county doesn’t have the revenue to be able to handle that.”

The post Sheriffs in Arizona Counties Refuse to Enforce State Law Making it a Crime for Migrants to Illegally Cross into the U.S. if Passed appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

As reported at The Gateway Pundit, Hezbollah terrorist group leader Hassan Nasrallah is now dead. Apparently, this didn’t go over so well among Shiite Muslims in Baghdad. According to Geller Report, thousands of Iraqis attempted to storm the US embassy in Baghdad.

On her blog Pamela Geller says, “Videos show protesters clashing with security forces in riot gear can be seen among the large crowd, along with flags of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Force.”

One Twitter account described these rioters as Hezbollah-affiliated.

Another pointed out, “Harris may have a Benghazi-like disaster on her hands unless something is done quickly. Pray for our embassy staff, their families, and those tasked with protecting them.”

While our embassy seems to be safe as of now this highlight yet again how the Iraq war was a disaster creating civil unrest in Iraq and allowing the Mullahs in Iran to add it to their Islamist sphere of influence.

– Clashes between Shiite protesters and Iraqi riot police on the suspension bridge in Baghdad intensify.

Hezbollah affiliated Protesters are trying to break the barricades to enter the US Embassy compound. pic.twitter.com/nZjGeXrROM

— The Informant (@theinformant_x) September 28, 2024

More from Baghdad.

A Shiite leader threatened to burn down the US Embassy.

Jabar al-Mamori, a member of the coordination framework of Iraqi Shiite parties, threatened to burn down the American embassy in Baghdad pic.twitter.com/x1QKwFWvuu

— Voice (@Voice1288291) September 28, 2024

The post Thousands Of Iraqis Attempt to Storm US Embassy in Baghdad Following Hezbollah Leader’s Targeting Killing appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.