Washington — After a student leader from the historic Tiananmen Square demonstrations ran for Congress in New York in 2022, a Chinese intelligence operator quickly hired a private investigator to look for any mistresses or tax issues that could jeopardize the candidate’s candidacy, according to prosecutors.

“In the end,” the operative warned his contact, “violence would be fine too.”

Tehran was listening as an Iranian journalist and activist in exile in the United States spoke out against Iran’s human rights violations. According to the Justice Department, members of an Eastern European organized crime group surveyed her Brooklyn home and planned to assassinate her in a murder-for-hire scheme directed from Iran. The attempt was disrupted, and criminal charges were filed.

The instances highlight the extraordinary efforts taken by countries such as China and Iran to intimidate, harass and even plot attacks on political opponents and activists in the United States. They demonstrate the alarming effects that geopolitical tensions may have for regular citizens, as governments that have historically been intolerant of dissent within their borders are increasingly casting a wary eye on those who cry out thousands of kilometers away.

“We’re not living in fear or paranoia, but the reality is very clear: the Islamic Republic wants us dead, and we have to look over our shoulder every day,” Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad stated in an interview.

The Justice Department has taken note of the matter, charging dozens of defendants with acts of global repression during the last five years. Senior FBI officials told The Associated Press that the tactics have become more sophisticated, including the use of proxies such as private investigators and organized crime leaders, and that countries are more willing to cross “serious red lines” ranging from harassment to violence to project power abroad and suppress dissent.

As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

Foreign adversaries are increasingly prioritizing well-funded intimidation campaigns for their intelligence services, and more countries — including some not traditionally hostile to the United States — have targeted critics in America and elsewhere in the West, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their investigations.

The Justice Department, for example, reported last November a foiled conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh activist in New York, which officials said was ordered by an Indian government official. Rwanda kidnapped Paul Rusesabagina of “Hotel Rwanda” fame from Texas and returned him to the country before releasing him, while Saudi Arabia has persecuted dissidents online and in person, according to the FBI.

“This is a huge priority for us,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security officer, citing an “alarming rise” in government-directed harassment.

He stated that the prosecutions are intended not just to hold harassers accountable but also to convey that the actions are “unacceptable from the perspective of United States sovereignty and defending American values — values around free expression and free association.”

Other countries have witnessed a rise in incidents.

According to an April Reporters Without Borders investigation, London is a “hotspot” for Iranian attacks on Persian-language broadcasters, with British counterterrorism police probing a one-month-old attack on an Iranian television presenter outside his London home. Despite Moscow’s protestations, harassment and attacks on Russians in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, including a journalist who became ill as a result of a suspected poisoning in Germany, have long been blamed on Russian intelligence agents.

Inside the United States, the trend is exacerbated by a deteriorating relationship with Iran and tensions with China over issues ranging from trade and intellectual property theft to electoral interference. Emerging technologies such as generative AI are also expected to be used for future harassment, according to a new danger assessment from US intelligence authorities.

“Transnational repression is a manifestation of the broader conflict between authoritarian regimes and democratic countries,” Olsen added. “It’s been a consistent theme of the way the world is changing from a geopolitical standpoint over the last decade.”

According to officials and supporters, China and Iran are two primary offenders.

Emails sent to the Iranian mission at the United Nations have yet to be responded to. A representative for the Chinese Embassy in Washington denied that the country engages in the practice, stating that the government “strictly abides by international law, and fully respects the law enforcement sovereignty of other countries.”

“We resolutely oppose ‘long-arm jurisdiction,'” the statement stated.

As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

However, US officials said China developed a campaign to do just that, starting “Operation Fox Hunt” to locate down Chinese expats targeted by Beijing to pressure them into returning to face charges.

A former Chinese city government official residing in New Jersey discovered a message in Chinese characters pinned to his front door that read: “If you are willing to return to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be fine.” According to a 2020 Justice Department case accusing a group of Chinese operatives and an American private investigator, “that’s the end of the matter!”

Though most defendants charged in transnational repression plans are based in their own country, arrests and prosecutions are rare; that particular case resulted in the conviction of a private investigator and two Chinese residents living in the United States last year.

Bob Fu, a Chinese American Christian pastor whose group, ChinaAid, promotes religious freedom in China, said he has faced extensive harassment for years. Large crowds of demonstrators have gathered for days at a time outside his West Texas house, arriving in well-coordinated operations that he says are related to the Chinese government.

Phony hotel reservations have been made in his name, as well as phony bomb threats to police claiming that he intends to detonate explosives. Flyers picturing him as the devil were given to neighbors. He stated that he has learned to take precautions when traveling, such as instructing his staff not to disclose his schedule in advance and that he has relocated from his home at the request of law authorities.

“I’m not feeling safe,” Fu told the Associated Press. When it comes to returning to China, where he was reared and fled more than 25 years ago as a religious refugee, he says: “I may be permitted to fly back, but it will be a one-way ticket. “I am sure I am on their wanted list.”

In 2020, protesters targeted Wu Jianmin, a former student leader in China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement, outside his home in Irvine, California. The harassment lasted more than two months.

“They shouted slogans outside my home and made verbal abuses,” he added. “They paraded in the neighborhood, distributed all sorts of pictures and flyers, and put them in the neighbors’ mailboxes.”

Wu says that perpetrators of harassment plots include retired Communist Party members living in the United States, their offspring, members of Chinese organizations with deep ties to the Chinese government, and even fugitives seeking bargains with Beijing.

“The end goal is the same,” Wu remarked during an interview in Mandarin Chinese. “Their task, as assigned by the Communist Party, is to suppress overseas pro-democracy activists.”

Last year, the Justice Department charged approximately three dozen officers from China’s national police force with using social media to target dissidents in the United States, including the creation of fake accounts that shared harassing videos and comments, and arrested two men who it claims helped establish a secret police outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood on behalf of the Chinese government.

The year before, federal prosecutors in New York revealed several wide-ranging plans to suppress dissidents, including one to dig up dirt on a little-known and ultimately unsuccessful congressional candidate.

Other targets have included American figure skater Alysa Liu and her father, Arthur, a political refugee who, according to prosecutors, were surveilled by a man posing as an Olympics committee member and requesting passport information.

A dissident artist in California made a sculpture depicting the coronavirus with the visage of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was similarly destroyed and burned.

“We should be under no illusion that somehow these are rogue actors or people unaffiliated with the Chinese government,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and member of a special House committee on China, said of the Chinese agents indicted.

‘Remove his head from his torso.’

In some cases, violence is organized in response to global events.

Prosecutors in 2022 charged an Iranian spy with paying $300,000 to “eliminate” Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton in retaliation for an airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful commander.

This year, the Justice Department charged an Iranian, identified as a drug trafficker and intelligence operative, as well as two Canadians, one a “full-patch” member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, in a murder-for-hire plot against two Iranians who had fled the country and were living in Maryland.

As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat

“We gotta erase his head from his torso,” one of the hired Canadians is accused of stating. Law enforcement stopped the threat.

Alinejad, an Iranian journalist, was targeted even before the Justice Department revealed the murder-for-hire scheme last year. In 2021, prosecutors prosecuted a gang of Iranians allegedly working for the country’s intelligence agencies with plotting to kidnap her.

Alinejad is still a renowned journalist and passionate opposition leader, and she says she intends to continue speaking out, including at a sentencing trial last year for a woman who prosecutors say unknowingly sponsored the kidnapping plot.

However, the story specifics are deeply ingrained in her consciousness. The criminal cases revealed the gravity of the threat she faced and the heinous preparations involved, such as researching how to whisk Alinejad out of New York on a military-style speedboat and transport her to Venezuela, as well as discussing lures for luring her from her home, such as asking for flowers from the garden outside.

One of the defendants in the murder-for-hire scheme was apprehended in 2022 after being discovered driving through Alinejad’s Brooklyn neighborhood with a loaded firearm and rounds of ammunition. Another defendant was extradited from the Czech Republic in February to face criminal proceedings. Two other people have been arrested.

The FBI interrupted the plot and encouraged Alinejad to relocate, which she did. But it also meant bidding goodbye to her beloved garden, which had brought her delight as she shared homegrown cucumbers and other veggies with her neighbors.

“They didn’t kill me physically, but they killed my relationship with my garden, with my neighbors,” Alinejad added.

SOURCE – (AP)

Just a few months shy of a quarter-century as Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, will sign a copy of the constitution on Tuesday, ushering in another six-year term as president with unparalleled powers.

Since becoming acting president on December 31, 1999, Putin has shaped Russia into a monolith, crushing political opposition, expelling independent journalists, and promoting an increasing adherence to prudish “traditional values” that push many in society to the margins.

His authority is so strong that other leaders could only stand on the sidelines while Putin began a war in Ukraine, despite predictions that the invasion would bring worldwide condemnation and harsh economic penalties, as well as cost Russia dearly in the blood of its men.

With that amount of control, it is difficult to predict what Putin will accomplish during his next term, both at home and abroad.

As Putin Begins Another 6-Year Term, He Is Entering A New Era Of Extraordinary Power In Russia

The war in Ukraine, in which Russia is making gradual but continuous battlefield advances, is the primary issue, and he shows no signs of reversing direction.

“The war in Ukraine is crucial to his current political ambition, and I see no reason to believe that will change. “And that affects everything else,” Brian Taylor, a Syracuse University professor and author of “The Code of Putinism,” told The Associated Press.

“It affects who’s in what positions, it affects what resources are available and it affects the economy, affects the level of repression internally,” he said.

In his February State of the Union address, Putin vowed to carry out Moscow’s objectives in Ukraine and do everything necessary to “defend our sovereignty and the security of our citizens.” He stated that the Russian military has “gained a huge combat experience” and is “firmly holding the initiative and waging offensives in several sectors.”

That will come at a high cost, potentially depleting funds for the massive domestic projects and changes in education, welfare, and poverty alleviation that Putin detailed in his two-hour presentation.

Taylor believed such initiatives were included in the address primarily for show rather than to indicate a genuine commitment to implement them.

Putin “thinks of himself in the broad historical terms of Russian territory, putting Ukraine back to where it belongs, and things like that. And I believe them outweigh any more socioeconomic-type programs,” Taylor added.

Suppose the battle does not result in absolute loss for either side, with Russia maintaining some of the territory it has already conquered. In that case, European governments fear Putin will be tempted to engage in additional military adventurism in the Baltics or Poland.

As Putin Begins Another 6-Year Term, He Is Entering A New Era Of Extraordinary Power In Russia

“It’s possible that Putin does have vast ambitions and will try to follow up on a costly success in Ukraine with a new attack somewhere else,” Harvard international relations expert Stephen Walt wrote in Foreign Policy. “But it is also entirely possible that his ambitions do not extend beyond what Russia has won — at enormous cost and that he has no need or desire to gamble for more.”

However, he said, “Russia will be in no shape to launch new wars of aggression when the war in Ukraine is finally over.”

Others argue that such a sensible worry may not prevail. According to Maksim Samorukov of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, “Moscow is likely to make self-defeating mistakes driven by Putin’s whims and delusions.”

In a Foreign Affairs column, Samorukov stated that Putin’s age may influence his judgment.

“At 71, his awareness of his death undoubtedly influences his decision-making. A rising awareness of his short time influenced his catastrophic choice to attack Ukraine.

Overall, Putin may be entering his new term with less influence than he appears to have.

Russia’s “vulnerabilities are concealed in plain sight. “Now more than ever, the Kremlin makes decisions in a personalized and arbitrary manner, with no basic controls,” Samorukov stated.

“The Russian political elite have grown more pliant in implementing Putin’s orders and more obsequious about his paranoid worldview,” he stated in the letter. The country’s leadership “is at permanent risk of crumbling overnight, as its Soviet predecessor did three decades ago.”

Putin is certain to maintain his hostility against the West, which, he stated in his State of the Nation speech, “would like to do to Russia the same thing they did in many other regions of the world, including Ukraine: to bring discord into our home, to weaken it from within.”

Putin’s hostility against the West stems not only from its backing for Ukraine but also from what he perceives as the erosion of Russia’s moral compass.

Russia banned the fictitious LGBTQ+ “movement” last year, labeling it extreme in what officials claimed was a fight for traditional values such as those promoted by the Russian Orthodox Church against Western influence. Courts also prohibited gender transformation.

“I would expect the role of the Russian Orthodox Church to continue to be quite visible,” Taylor said. He also mentioned the social media anger that erupted during a party held by TV presenter Anastasia Ivleeva, in which guests were urged to arrive “almost naked.”

As Putin Begins Another 6-Year Term, He Is Entering A New Era Of Extraordinary Power In Russia

“Other actors in the system understand that that stuff resonates with Putin. … There were people interested in exploiting things like that,” he went on to say.

Although the opposition and independent media have nearly evaporated as a result of Putin’s repressive actions, there is still room for future movements to dominate Russia’s information space, such as continuing efforts to construct a “sovereign internet.”

The inauguration takes place two days before Victory Day, Russia’s most important secular festival honoring the Soviet Red Army’s seizure of Berlin in World War II and the war’s terrible difficulties, which cost the USSR around 20 million people.

The defeat of Nazi Germany is important to modern Russia’s character, as is Putin’s justification of the war in Ukraine as an analogous conflict.

SOURCE – (AP)

More than a decade ago, Justin Trudeau seized a demoralized, strife-torn, third-place Liberal Party and transformed it into his own image, winning election after election. There are few voices of criticism within the Liberal party because the voices that do matter are all important because of him.

However, according to the most recent surveys, the Liberals are on track for not only defeat, but destruction in the next federal election. Even the most ardent Trudeau supporters must be starting to ponder if it’s time for a change at the top.

The Conservatives established a significant lead over the Liberals last summer and have maintained it ever since. That lead may potentially be increasing. Abacus Data’s weekend survey for the Toronto Star shows the Tories leading the Grits by 19 percentage points in the popular vote, 43% to 24%, with the NDP at 18%.

The Liberals are in third position in both the Prairies and British Columbia. The Conservatives have more than 50% support in Atlantic Canada and lead the Liberals by 14 points in Ontario. But here is the genuinely astonishing number: According to Abacus, the two parties are statistically deadlocked in Quebec, a historically liberal bastion, with the Bloc Québécois at 34%, the Conservatives at 26%, and the Liberals at 25%.

(The online survey of 2,398 adults was conducted from February 1 to 7, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)

Provincial sample sizes are modest, with a wider margin of error than the national total. That’s why the Léger poll released last week is so significant. An online survey of 1,032 Quebec voters released earlier this month found the Bloc Québécois at 29%, the Liberals at 28%, and the Conservatives at 24%.

Two surveys show the Conservatives competing with the Liberals in Quebec. What does this mean?

It implies that if an election were conducted tomorrow, the Liberals would lose the majority of their 24 seats in Atlantic Canada and at least some of their 34 seats in Quebec.

The Conservatives would significantly reduce Liberal strongholds in suburban Ontario and British Columbia, while the NDP may win seats from them in the downtowns. The prairies would remain a liberal desert.

Some Liberals feel Mr. Trudeau is the ideal leader to save the furniture, as the saying goes, and that even if he loses the next election, the Prime Minister will protect the Liberal base for a successor to build on. Those who believe that should reconsider.

The Liberals under Mr. Trudeau risk a historic defeat that could approach the disasters of 1958, 1984, or 2011. According to polling expert Philippe Fournier of 338Canada.com, the argument that there is still time to turn things around appears to be “naive wishful thinking.”

“The Conservatives already have their winning coalition of voters,” he wrote on Sunday. Barring anything terrible, that vote is now final.

So, is it time for Trudeau to step down? Voters seem to believe so.

Data Dive with Nik Nanos: The national mood is dour—good news for the Conservatives

According to Nik Nanos’ poll for The Globe and Mail, 46 percent of Canadians believe Mr. Trudeau has done a poor job as Liberal Leader, while 25% think he has done an exceptional job. When asked how the Liberals could improve their prospects of winning the next election, 39% said they should replace Mr. Trudeau. Only 3% thought the party’s best option was for him to remain.

(The hybrid phone and online poll of 1,114 adults took place between January 29 and 31, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

One of the most significant responsibilities of a political leader is to leave their party in good standing for their successor. Stephen Harper not only reunited the conservative movement and gave nearly ten years of rule, but he also left the Conservative Party with strong finances and 99 seats in the House following his 2015 election defeat.

He has a responsibility to leave a strong Liberal Party to the next leader. He must honestly examine himself whether being at the party’s helm is the best way to guarantee that outcome. Most voters appear to have come to their own judgments.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Canada’s Household Debt Nears $3 Trillion Under Trudeau

Canada’s Household Debt Nears $3 Trillion Under Trudeau