Former CCP Leader Jiang Zemin's Bloody Legacy; Illegal Immigration Could Double When Title 42 Ends

This program is presented by Birch Gold Group, the precious metal IRA specialists. Good morning. In today's headlines, former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin is dead. Many Chinese say he should have been brought to justice for his persecution of Falun Gong. We spoke to an expert to hear more. Tis not the season of good tidings for CNN employees. The media company informed staff that pink slips may be on the way for some. Biden's student debt relief plan hits another major roadblock. Find out the current status on the of the program in limbo. Title 42 ends in three weeks. What effect will it have on the number of illegal border crossings? And a policeman tricks a teenager online and then does the unthinkable to her family. We'll take a look at the disturbing so-called catfishing case. Good morning. Welcome to NTD. I'm Kevin Hogan. Good morning. I'm Evelyn Lee. It's Thursday today, the first of December. When protesters in China and abroad chanted the slogans Xi Jinping step down and Communist Party step down, they launched the most daring and widespread protests by Chinese people in decades. Then suddenly the CCP announced the news of former leader Jiang Zemin's death, sparking speculation. People in China and overseas Chinese are reacting to the news. Chinese state media reported Wednesday that former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin died due to leukemia and multiple organ failure. Jiang was the Communist regime's top leader from 1989 to 2002. Some Chinese citizens spoke to Chinese language NTD on what they thought about the news. He died at an interesting time because right now the entire country is resisting tyranny. People are putting forward their basic demands, which is for the CCP to step down. And he died today. So he died at a very strange time. But even before Jiang Zemin died, people around China were waiting for him to die. Jiang is known for launching one of the most brutal persecutions against a faith group in modern times. In 1999, he launched the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual meditation practice with teachings based on truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. Over the past two decades, at least thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were tortured to death or were killed and had their organs forcibly removed. Countless more were harassed, imprisoned or tortured for their faith. He is responsible for extremely evil deeds. He launched an inhumane persecution against the faith group Falun Dafa out of jealousy and suppressed them with crazy methods. I think people should have used the legal system, international law and the Chinese constitution to sue him and bring him to justice. That would have been good for the people. I think that's how he should have ended. Over the past decade, rumors of Jiang's death have circulated in China once in a while. Back in 2011, a Hong Kong-based media falsely reported that Jiang had died. It prompted many people inside China to celebrate with fireworks. And with his death, Falun Gong became a trending keyword on Twitter yesterday. Jiang Zemin is widely known to have started the persecution of Falun Gong, which is considered one of the most horrific persecutions in modern times. We want to bring in Levi Braude for more. He is the Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. Good morning Levi. Good morning. Like just mentioned that Jiang Zemin is infamous for starting the persecution of Falun Gong, he also jailed human rights and pro-democracy activists. How big of an influence did he have on the current human rights situation in China? Probably the biggest influence of any modern figure in China. Not only did he start the persecution against Falun Gong, which had 100 million people at that time, so he's targeting 100 million of his own citizens. He was the one who started the 610 office, which is essentially a Gestapo for Falun Gong and created an extra legal mechanism to go out, target and suppress dissidents. He was the one who started the Great Firewall, which is basically limiting or restricting Chinese citizens from reaching the free internet and also surveilling them. And perhaps most troubling, he was the one that gave the order to use forced organ harvesting on Falun Gong, thereby taking innocent prisoners of conscience, killing them, extracting their organs and selling them at enormous profit. All of these things are things that he started to go after Falun Gong and now they are being used on regular other Chinese citizens, Uyghurs and other groups. Wow. I want to go into a little bit more detail about the organ harvesting in a little bit, but can you first share some numbers of what the impact has been so far of that persecution of Falun Gong? Well, I think the most important number to look at is the fact that there were 100 million people practicing Falun Gong in 1999. So that's one out of every 13 people in the country. So if you take one out of 13 people in the country and you arbitrarily detain them or torture them, in many cases kill them, that decimates Chinese society. We knew when the UN did an investigation in the early 2000s, they found that at least 66% of all torture cases coming out of China were Falun Gong practitioners. It greatly expanded the surveillance state. Another number that is quite telling is that the China Tribunal, which was an international team looking into organ harvesting in the last few years, found that upwards of 60,000 Falun Gong practitioners were being killed per year as part of the organ harvesting atrocities. So these numbers are huge and people have to understand that these are all happening in China proper. This is not off in Xinjiang or some corner of China or some province. This is right in Beijing and Shanghai and Wuhan and Chengdu, all the cities, all the villages, this is happening throughout China. And quite troubling, but I'm just really wondering how was he able to bring it that far? And I'm not just talking about the torture, the killing, I'm especially also now thinking of the organ harvesting that you just mentioned, you know, killing all these people to sell their organs for profit. How was he able to convince the country and, you know, everyone involved really that something so horrific was the right thing to do? He took a two-pronged approach. The first is an unprecedented volume and ferocity of propaganda. I had friends actually living in Beijing when the persecution started and they described it as propaganda marathons, literally 24-7, state-run TV, newspapers, magazines, even children's coloring books. I mean, everything had this anti-Falun Gong propaganda to demonize people who practice. And over time, that seeps in. If that's all you're taking in day after day after day, it is somewhat successful in demonizing and dehumanizing people who practice Falun Gong. So that was the first thing. The second thing Zhang did, which was unprecedented, is that he elevated an unprecedented number of officials, generals, police chiefs, all based on whether they were going to follow him in persecuting Falun Gong or not. And so he built up a faction that was solely focused on this and with people of the character that would do this kind of thing. So he's building essentially a crime organization. So if you have the propaganda demonizing Falun Gong and you've put together a team of people who are so morally out of touch that they would do these kind of atrocities, you bring those two together and that's what you have as the tragic situation that's been happening in China over the last 23 years. I see. We have one more minute before we have to go. So really quickly, he stepped down as a party leader in 2004, but I understand he was very active behind the scenes. Can you tell us more about his influence beyond his role and will something change now with his passing? Anytime a Chinese leader steps down, there's always a significant amount of influence he's exerting over the parties. They always have a lot of infighting and factions. The Jiang Zemin faction, as I mentioned, was very nefarious and somewhat powerful. It's very hard to tell whether this will have an immediate material change on the ground, but certainly I think in many people's eyes, it is somewhat of a hopeful change because maybe those with a conscience can now step forward and do the right thing. Well, thank you so much, Levi Braude with the Falun Dafa Information Center for some really eye-opening insights. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan hit a major roadblock yesterday. A U.S. appeals court rejected the administration's bid to revive the plan. A federal judge in Texas struck the plan down in mid-November. He ruled the plan unlawful. That decision was one of two nationally that is preventing the Department of Education from moving forward. Biden promised to grant debt relief to millions of student borrowers. The White House had no immediate comment on yesterday's ruling, but the administration has said in the past they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. They've already asked the high court to lift an order by the St. Louis-based Court of Appeals that bars the program. About 26 million Americans have applied for student loan forgiveness. The Department of Education approved around 16 million requests by the time the plan was blocked. The Texas judge called Biden's move one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States. And CNN has informed employees that layoffs have commenced. The Wednesday announcement is expected to impact hundreds of staffers at the news network and marks the deepest cuts to the organization in years. CEO Chris Licht described the cuts in an all-staff memo as a gut punch to the organization. Employees at the company had been anxiously bracing for the layoffs. This since Licht informed them last month that unsettling changes lie ahead. The cable company's ratings declined 27 percent from 2021 with profit falling to below 1 billion for the first time since 2016. Licht said the company would notify a limited number of individuals, largely paid contributors, that they have been let go. He said the company will notify impacted employees today. Licht remarked in the memo that it would be a difficult time for everyone. The Biden administration says it's expecting an increase in activity at the southern border. It says the number of attempted crossings could soon double. That's because Title 42 is scheduled to end in three weeks. The Department of Homeland Security projects up to 14,000 illegal crossings per day and estimates up to 18,000, I shall say, as a worst-case scenario. Title 42 was invoked at the beginning of the pandemic. It was recently struck down by court order. The Trump-era public health policy gives U.S. authorities more license to expel illegal border crossers. Some small-town voters in Wisconsin from opposite sides of the aisle are expressing growing fears for democracy. But despite their differences and concerns, they also share some common ground and hope. NTD's Jeremy Sandberg has the story. A growing conservative movement has risen to prominence in Wisconsin's St. Croix County. A number of Republican voters there say they see America as a place where democracy is under attack by a tyrannical government, few officials can be trusted, and where neighbors might have to someday band together to protect each other. Some have labeled them as extremists, fanatics, or conspiracy theorists. What is an extremist? I mean, somebody that wants intact families, wants our rights given us to God through the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, if that is extreme nowadays, I guess I am. Republican Mark Carlson recently retired from his job at a juvenile detention facility. He won a seat on the country's Board of Supervisors in April. I never dreamed of being required to wear masks or being required to get a shot, or even traveling. If you want to travel, you can't. He says he's concerned with the direction the country is heading. I believe there's a plan to lead us towards socialism, Marxism, communism type of government from within. Democrat Paul Hambleton is a retired English teacher. He is now the local Democratic Party officer. The world is changing. It can be disorienting for people. Hambleton lives about 20 miles away from Carlson. They've found themselves on opposite sides of a political divide. Menace seems to have been part of the campaign for the last four, maybe longer, but really the last six years, something like that, and that got in the way of a meaningful conversation about how we solve the big problems that we're all facing. The midterm elections failed to produce the red tsunami many Republicans were predicting. Still, well over 150 candidates that support former President Trump succeeded across the country. Hambleton says overall he's pleased with the midterm results, and that it shows people can still be brave and stick their necks out. We need to be political. We need to speak up. We need to disagree. It's essential, really. Despite their differences, both men say they abhor violence and are willing to reach across the aisle. Liberalism and conservatism aren't that far apart. You can be pro-American, pro-constitutional. You just want bigger government programs. I want less. We can talk about it. So I want to let them know we can work together. They both agree there is hope for U.S. democracy. Jeremy Sandberg, NTD News. We're moving on to a horrifying case in California dubbed the catfishing case. A teenage girl tricked online by a Virginia police officer pretending to be someone else. He allegedly traveled to California and murdered the girl's mother and grandparents. Police say the man killed himself as deputies approached. A family member and Detective Robert Olson discussed the case. This horrific event started with an inappropriate online romance between a predator and a child. This was an adult that traveled across the country to kidnap a 15-year-old girl with the idea to kidnap her and kill and devastate our family. I don't like that we're using the term catfishing in this incident. This is an online sexual enticement of a minor. This is a federal felony. It's a murder. So the sexual exploitation of children online is very prevalent. I work directly with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and in 2021 they received over 22 million reports from service providers and the community for exactly this sort of thing. Detective Olson also shared some guidance for parents to prevent this sort of terrible incident. He says simply to pay attention. He says people would be astonished at just how many parents aren't paying attention to their kid's online activity. He added that it's important to start monitoring a child a smart device as soon as it goes into a kid's hands. That way if they face a problem online when they're older they'll already be used to your involvement in their online activity. And Elon Musk is walking back talk of any spat with Apple. The Twitter CEO now says Apple never intended any drastic measures. Find out more after the break. It's just clear as day. The media whether it's broadcast cable or print media has become extremely biased and I started looking online for alternative ways to to get information and I saw an ad for a free trial and I looked at it and I said Epoch Times. I mean come on this is end of days type of stuff. I mean what are they going to be talking about here. And I said well it's a free trial. Let me dig in. Is it giving me both sides. Is it giving me an objective point of view here. I have looked for opportunities to see where they might be biased and I don't find it. It has given me a level of trust in media that I didn't think I'd ever get back. I love the Epoch Times because it has renewed my faith in the idea that a reliable responsible non-biased source of information is available. And I can say that I love it because of it. Welcome back. Elon Musk tweeted yesterday that the misunderstanding about Twitter being removed from Apple's App Store has been resolved. That's following his meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Musk wrote the two had a good conversation and that Cook was clear that Apple never considered removing Twitter. Musk tweeted a thank you to the Apple CEO for showing him around Apple's headquarters. Musk had accused Apple of threatening to block Twitter from its App Store without saying why in a series of tweets. He also said it had stopped advertising on the social media platform. He later tagged Cook's Twitter account in another tweet asking what's going on there. Elon Musk announced yesterday that his company Neuralink will be ready to test a wireless device on humans within six months. The device in the form of a brain chip is designed to help disabled patients regain movement and communication ability. Here's NTT's Kost M&S to tell us more. The first two applications we're going to aim for in humans are restoring vision and I think this is like notable in that even if someone has never had vision ever, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision. Elon Musk says the new brain chip technology could help disabled patients control complex electronic devices and eventually allow people with paralysis to regain motor function. We've been working hard to be ready for our first human and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human but we're submitted I think most of our paperwork to the FDA and we think probably in about six months we should be able to have our first Neuralink in a human. As well as also treat brain diseases such as Parkinson's, dementia and Alzheimer's. Neuralink's last public presentation more than a year ago involved a monkey with a brain chip that played a computer game by just using its mind. You can see Sake, that's one of our other monkeys, typing on a keyboard but now this is telepathic typing so to be clear this is the he's not actually using a keyboard he's moving the cursor with his mind to the highlighted key. Neuralink however is running behind schedule. Musk approached competitor Synchron earlier this year about potential funding after he became frustrated with the slow progress within the company. In July Synchron implanted its own device successfully in a patient in the United States for the first time after receiving US regulatory approval the previous year. It has since completed studies on four people in Australia. Kost M&S, NTD News. At least 19 people were injured when a pipeline exploded in eastern Mexico on Tuesday as workers tried to control a gas leak. The blast occurred in Agua Dulce south of Veracruz. Employees of the Mexican oil company Petroleos Mexicanos were working to control the ethane gas leak which was initially reported on Sunday night. Local officials said those injured in the blast suffered first and second degree burns and were taken to the hospital. Nearly 100 people in the area have been temporarily moved to a shelter as a precautionary measure. Fuel theft has had serious consequences in Mexico. In 2019 over 100 people died in the state of Hidalgo due to an illegal pipeline tap. And over in Hawaii the eruption at the world's largest volcano Mauna Loa has caused rivers of oozing lava since yesterday. The lava was slowly tumbling down the slope around six miles from the highway known as Saddle Road which runs through old lava flows. It's not clear whether the lava will end up covering the road. The eruption also interrupted power to the world's premier station that measures carbon But officials say this doesn't give cause for concern. Mauna Loa last erupted in 1984. It's erupted 34 times since 1843 when record-keeping first began. The adjacent smaller volcano Kilauea has been erupting since September 2021. And coming up you won't find these big charmers in a traditional beauty pageant but that doesn't make these humpbacked wonders any less gorgeous. And a winter wonderland opens in Manhattan. The display includes about 4,000 pounds of candy. That's after the break on NTD News. This is Stephen K. Bannon. I urge you to protect your savings from inflation by diversifying into a physical gold IRA from Birch Gold Group. Simply text the word NTD to 989898 and you'll get a free info kit on gold IRAs explaining everything. Coming soon on the premiere of International Reporters Roundtable. Journalists Greg Ho, Will Richardson and Kosto Okondo join us to discuss the relationship between China and Russia, their activity in Latin America, how this is playing out at the U.S. southern border and what's really going on in Ukraine. What's the link? Is there a strategy? Tune in Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. or Sunday at 7 p.m. eastern time as NTD host Tiffany Meyer and our guest panelists give us a clearer picture of these global events. Welcome back I'm Kevin Hogan. The Soccer World Cup is drawing millions of fans from around the world to Qatar but now a camel beauty pageant is stealing the show. NTD's Flinders Kingsley has the story. Qatar has drawn in the best camels from the gulf region and is holding a camel beauty world cup. The event has had a lot of success with the price of camels reaching around three million, four million or up to five and a half million dollars. This success encouraged us to care for this sport. This camel has high regard in the gulf countries because it was our companion during the formation of the state, the beginning of civilization in the gulf. Different breeds of camels are judged on different characteristics. Black camels are judged on body size, the head and the location of the ears. The acel camels have special characteristics such as delicacy in the bones and hooves. With the magateer type camels judges look for proportionality and ears that drop down instead of standing straight. The winner of the magateer type camel won $55,000. I can't describe my feelings because this female has an audience like the audience of the world cup like Real Madrid or Manchester United and now they are all celebrating. Before the beauty pageant the camels are assessed for any foul play namely cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery causes tissue laceration, cuts the nerves, causes inflammations, fibrosis and some use fillers, botox, silicon, everything that comes or doesn't come to mind. Camel milk has been consumed in the region since antiquity. The locals say it has numerous benefits. In another competition the female who produces the most milk is awarded $5,500. And up next a gingerbread village display has just recently opened at Essex market in Manhattan. The winter wonderland includes about 4,000 pounds of candy and today's Andrew Thomas has the details on the candy neighborhood. John Lovitch is the artist and creator behind gingerbread lane. For him gingerbread is a way of life. The Essex market gingerbread lane display features about 700 houses. So what's behind me or by definition I'm standing in the middle of is the largest gingerbread village in the world. We have multiple Guinness world records. This year's not exactly big enough to compete for the Guinness world record for the number of houses but it is big enough to compete for the Guinness world record for square footage. The Missouri native got his start in the gingerbread business in Kansas City almost 29 years ago. Ten years ago he started doing exhibitions in New York City. This year he has three displays here at Essex market. One in Salt Lake City, Utah and another in Kansas City. Gingerbread lane has a real nice escapist quality. You can come here and look at this and and for that brief moment you're going to forget about your mortgage or COVID or politics or Aaron judge or whatever's driving you crazy because this will take you away from it for a few minutes and we have people that sometimes look at it 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes and they really enjoy it. It's a great feeling for me to know that I'm responsible for creating that feeling of happiness. Lovitch does all his baking in his kitchen in Queens all year long. He says he'll start preparing for next year about five days before Christmas. Thanksgiving just happened and Christmas is three and a half weeks away and that's about when I start over for next year so I'm I'm wrapping up some small details here the next couple days just kind of tying up some things and then I'll go all over the country to my other exhibits in Salt Lake and Kansas City conducting make your own gingerbread house classes and then we'll reboot somewhere around the 20th of December. I'll get started for next year's. The Essex market gingerbread lane exhibit runs through January 16th. When the display ends visitors are welcome to take home a gingerbread house for free. Andrew Thomas, NTD News. That's my kind of neighborhood. Oh yeah I bet the property value is astronomical. Well only if I don't eat it all. Yeah right well I mean if you're looking to do some home improvement you could just stop by a candy store. Oh awesome yeah. All right that's all for today's program. We'd love to hear from you before you go. You can share your thoughts and your story at goodmorningatntd.com so shoot us an email if you'd like. Thanks for watching. I'm Evelyn Lee and I'm Kevin Hogan. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Did you know YouTube only keeps selective videos on its platform so if you want to make sure you get the full picture just subscribe to our newsletter. Go to newsletter.ntd.com and sign up. It's free.