Sunday 7 August 2022, 9 am: As of 3 minutes ago, the U.S. Senate is “debating” and will soon vote to tax Americans, supposedly, to control human-produced CO2 (which was less than 0.00025% of the atmosphere at the end of 2020), and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on their net zero fraud. If you are an American citizen, please call or write your Senators.

August 6, 2022  (Transmitted via Senator Hirono’s official website.)  Also separately to Senator Brian Schatz thru his official website. I was a bit harder on Schatz since he is the chair of the partisan Democrat committee pushing this climate agenda. More on that here: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/climate https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/senate-democrats-are-getting-head-start-climate-change/593824/

Of course it is YOU and me and the resources of the planet that U.S. Democrats, your government wherever you live, UN IPCC, Global Resetters, world banks, etc. want to control through global governance.

Dear Senator Hirono,  Dear Senator Schatz; [U.S. Senators of Hawaii, both Democrats]

I am responding to your email reply to me dated Fri 8/5/2022. 

You are dangerously, irresponsibly, deadly misinformed about climate and energy.  You and your ilk are harming Americans and your Hawaiian constituents, and also by extension people of the world, especially poor people in less developed countries.

Here is high school arithmetic and data from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory on Mauna Loa.  No expensive computer models.  No statistics.  No estimates.  No assumptions.  Just data and arithmetic. 

ppm is parts per million.  That’s one molecule of CO2 per 999,999 other air molecules.

Measured average net CO2 in air for 2020 was 414.24 ppm.* 

Measured average net CO2 in air for 2019 was  411.66 ppm.*

414.24 minus 411.66 = 2.58 ppm *

Net human CO2 for 2020 cannot exceed 2.58 ppm, that’s 0.000258% of air, i.e., the net CO2 increase due to all sources & sinks, human and natural, for year 2020 = 2.58 ppm or 0.000258%. 

Net human CO2 cannot exceed 0.000258% of atmosphere in 2020.  2.58/414 = 0.0062 = 0.62% Net human CO2 cannot exceed 0.62% of net total CO2 for 2020. 

(0.000258% of atmosphere* is the maximum possible net human CO2 increase for 2020 because that annual increase from 2019 to 2020 (i.e., 2.58 ppm), includes the increase in CO2 due to all CO2 sinks and all CO2 sources, human and natural, for that year. There is no CO2 “atmospheric fraction” hidden or accumulating somewhere.  (I am using 2020 data in this example only because NOAA has not finalized 2021 data.)

In other words, even if that tiny amount was not absorbed by ocean, soil and plants, it is a very tiny amount of CO2 which cannot possibly cause any significant or even measurable amount of warming because the energy bands of CO2 gas in air are already saturated.  And, scientific evidence shows maximum possible human CO2 is only a very minor perturbation to the slight trend in total CO2 (average trend since 1970 is 1.77 ppm per year) which is absorbed naturally. 

Very dangerously, you and your Democrat colleagues and the UN, WEF, WHO and etc. are suppressing energy production from fossil fuels for no measurable reason.  This climate change agenda is based on an academic climate model which is incapable of being validated.  Bankers, IMF, World Bank etc are denying funding to companies and nations for fossil-fueled electric power.  This is a deadly mistake and it is on you and your ilk.  Shame on you. 

Global warming proponents Dr. Ben Santer, Dr. Michael Mann et al authored a peer reviewed study in Nature Geoscience** and admitted that their climate models “substantially” overstate warming.  “In the early twenty-first century, satellite-derived tropospheric warming trends were generally smaller than trends estimated from a large multi-model ensemble,” reads the first line of the abstract.  In other words, the actual temperature trends were less than their models.  They continued, “Over most of the early twenty-first century, however, MODEL tropospheric warming is SUBSTANTIALLY larger than OBSERVED,” reads the abstract.  (Capital letters are mine for emphasis.) In other words, their computer models substantially overestimated the global warming which has been observed in the real world.

Real science and actual measured data clearly show that CO2 created by human-related activity is so small in relation to the CO2 derived from natural sources that eliminating all of the human-related CO2 would not change the earth’s climate one bit.  In other words, the CO2 concentration today is the same as it would be if humans never existed.   Why?  Because, contrary to propaganda and mainstream media hype, CO2 added to the atmosphere only temporarily changes CO2 concentration.  The ratio of CO2 and air versus CO2 in water is an intensive property of matter, like a molecular weight.  We can only temporarily change that ratio, then it resets.  The application of Henry’s Law and actual data clearly show this to be true.  Oceans absorb and emit enormous amounts of CO2 in order to keep the earth’s atmosphere chemically balanced.  Humans cannot change this by adding or subtracting CO2.  To think otherwise is pure folly, wasteful, deadly and non-science.  

Another misconception is that CO2 causes smog and is somehow unhealthy.  Not true.  Smog is comprised of other chemicals and has nothing to do with CO2.  CO2 is not pollution.  CO2 concentration as shown above is very low and it is plant food.  Plans and investments to reduce CO2 is a global suicide mission.  The planet needs more CO2, as the MIT and Princeton scientists at CO2 Coalition, Richard Lindzen and Will Happer, keep repeating: “There is no climate crisis.”

CO2 is required for photosynthesis.  THE ONLY WAY CO2 gets into plants is by absorbing CO2 from the air.  Without photosynthesis there would be no plant life and without plant life there would be no other life.  More CO2 in the atmosphere results in more plant life (for food, etc.) and more oxygen in the atmosphere for humans and other life forms to breathe.  In contrast, plans to reduce CO2 are deadly dangerous.  

Given these facts, could you please explain to me why you continue to support the deadly, dangerous climate change narrative.  Especially in view of the fact that converting America from an economy that is based on cost-effective and energy efficient fossil fuels to more expensive and less efficient solar and wind energy sources will cause all American goods and services to be more costly and less competitive in world markets.  Not to mention the fact that the billions of tax dollars spent on such a conversion could be better spent on upgrading America’s eroding infrastructure, investing in fundamental research that will make America more competitive in the future and of course not spending the money at all in order to reduce America’s out of control national debt.

Very truly yours,

Mr Clare L Bromley III

Holualoa

*Tans, P. CO2 annual means 1959 -2020. NOAA and Scripps. Global Monitoring Laboratory. File Creation: Fri Mar 5 08:40:06 2021. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

** http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/articles/SanterEtAlNatureGeosci17.pdf

August 2, 2022

https://youtu.be/ZKQ-yd-tzVA

Translation: Alaska is ours

Another article. Comments by a former U.S. General

https://rumble.com/v1co6mz-leaked-audio-exposes-chinas-war-plan-to-invade-u.s..html

God help us.

Do the math.

• Net CO2 in air for 2020 was ~414 ppm, that’s 0.000414 *
• Human CO2 cannot exceed 2.58 ppm, that’s 0.00000258, i.e., the net CO2 increase due to all sources & sinks for year 2020 = 2.58 ppm. Net human CO2 cannot exceed 0.000258% of atmosphere. *
• 2.58/414 = 0.0062 = 0.62% Net human CO2 cannot exceed 0.62% of net total CO2 for 2020. 
• In 1970, average net CO2 was 325.68 ppm *
• In 1969, average net CO2 was 324.62 ppm *
• 325.68 minus 324.62 = 1.06 ppm *
• For 2020, average net CO2 was 414.24 ppm *
• For 2019 average net CO2 was 411.66 *
• 414.24 minus 411.66 = 2.58 ppm *
• 50 year maximum possible net human CO2 increase = 2.58 minus 1.06 = 1.52 ppm
• Increase in 50 years total net CO2 = 414.24 minus 325.68 = 88.56 ppm = 1.77 ppm/yr
• Slope for total net CO2 = y = mx+b
• 414.24 = m50 + 325.68
• (414.24-325.68)/50 = m = 1.77 ppm/year average
• Slope for 50 year maximum possible human CO2 increase y = mx + b
• (2.58 – 1.06)/50 = m = 0.0304 ppm/yr average
• 1.77 / 0.0304 = 58  
• Total net CO2 growing 58 times faster than maximum possible human CO2.
• Therefore, human CO2 is not causing growth in global CO2.

It is maximum possible net human CO2 because the annual increase from 1969 to 1970 (i.e., 1.06 ppm), and the annual increase from 2019 to 2020 (i.e., 2.58 ppm), includes the increase in CO2 due to all CO2 sinks and all CO2 sources, human and natural, for those two years. There is no CO2 “atmospheric fraction” hidden or accumulating somewhere.

As stated previously on this blog, if net human CO2 emissions were causing the slope in net global average atmospheric CO2 concentration, then the two slopes must be parallel or intersect, that is, there must be a positive correlation. However, the two slopes are diverging over time, the correlation is negative, therefore net human emissions cannot be the cause of the increasing slope of net global average atmospheric concentration.

Using these same data 1970-2020, annual averages, there is an apparent increase of about 88.56 ppm (414.24 – 325.68) over the 50 years, which is only about 1.77 ppm per year.  This is already a small amount and probably would be lost in the noise of the two giant fluxes, i.e., CO2 absorption flux and CO2 emission flux.  But even that 1.77 ppm/yr needs further investigation.  For example, there is the larger seasonality (i.e., the sharks teeth seasonal cycle) which has larger variation at some of the sampling locations than the 1.77 ppm/yr, but not at other locations.  And no doubt there are other cycles to be found in the data, el Nino’s for example, and human population differences driving CO2 emission differences between northern and southern hemispheres.

Is this 1.77 ppm/yr a net accumulation of CO2?  Or is this an adjustment of the partition ratio resulting from the phase-state reaction and partition of CO2 gas between air vs the environment, mostly ocean surface?  Or, is the phase-state partition ratio perturbed by a trend in sea surface temperature? Or, perhaps perturbed by temperature, salinity, alkalinity or partial pressure changes at the measurement location?

NOAA-Scripps averages averages of averages, as they acknowledge in the footnote of the table in one of their papers copied below.  It is well known that this is bad practice and results in errors.  But it depends on how exactly it is done.  To figure this out is time consuming, as you can imagine. 

For example: the average of {2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2} is 2, (N=13) and the average of {4} is 4. (N=1). The average of the averages is 3. But the average of all numbers is 30/14 ≃ 2.14.  It is possible to produce a trend in the data by averaging averages post data collection. 

It is curious that they report – for 60 years – uncertainty of each annual mean of exactly 0.12. They define uncertainty, “The estimated uncertainty in the annual mean is the standard deviation of the differences of annual mean values determined independently by NOAA/ESRL and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.”

Is this apparent trend in CO2 concentration of 1.77 ppm per year real?  And, what are the effects of suppression of the variance in the data due to the averaging of averages?

References:

Thoning, K., Tans, P., Komhr, W. 1989.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory: 2. Analysis of the NOAA GMCC data, 1974-1985.  Journal of Geophysical Research.

Abstract: The first 12 years (1974–1985) of continuous atmospheric CO/sub 2/ measurements from the NOAA GMCC programs at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii are analyzed. Hourly and daily variations in the concentration of CO/sub 2/ due to local sources and sinks are described, with subsequent selection of data representing background concentrations. A digital filtering technique using the fast Fourier transform and low-pass filters was used to smooth the selected data and to separate the seasonal cycle.

Tans, P. CO2 annual means 1959 -2020. NOAA and Scripps. Global Monitoring Laboratory. File Creation: Fri Mar 5 08:40:06 2021. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Only the number is now $9 trillion according to McKinsey & Co.

Stimulated by an article in ZeroHedge on 1^st August 2022, formed the basis for this educational video – be aware of how the world works, and where it’s now heading, driven by increasing involvement by unelected UN Agencies / Agenda 2030 & the WEF (World Economic Forum).

Wow – This Explains the War on Farming and Private Property Ownership – YouTube Video summary 28 minutes. Excellent.

The full article: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/un-world-economic-forum-behind-global-war-farmers-experts

“Republicans and Democrats alike seem to have decided that immigration is how we avoid competition.”

Pamela Denise Long, a contributor for Newsweek, wrote an op-ed asserting that Democrats and Republicans continually fail the American worker by favoring foreign workers rather than committing to the success of our country’s own talent pipeline:

“[The National Defense Act] is the third major piece of legislation to have an amendment protecting or expanding immigration in it, following the example of the COMPETES Act and Build Back Better. This third significant immigration proposal within the first two years of President Joe Biden’s rule joins the nonexistent border enforcement that has accompanied this president’s rule, signaling in no uncertain terms that the United States is a borderless nation.

…Legislators are waging an immigration charm offensive that will end in chaos for the descendants of slaves, working class Americans and U.S.-born STEM professionals. I’m deeply concerned that, for fear of being called xenophobic, my fellow Americans will remain silent until the damage is obvious but irreparable.”

“Why don’t our dreams matter?” Long asks. They do, and with one click of the button below, you can send a message to the elected officials that need to be reminded that more of the same schemes to increase immigration will produce more of the same results.

The American Dream is comatose for far too many who have a claim to it.

According to U.S. Representative Nancy Mace, serving Charleston, South Carolina, “Since the current Administration has been in office, more than 3.1 million illegal border crossings have taken place across our southern border.”

Hawaii’s delegation is among the worst of the worse. This is based on their votes and support of legislation, as scored by NumbersUSA. An embarrassment to their constituents here in Hawaii. But our representatives do not care.

Hat tip to Chris Johnson at NumbersUSA.com https://www.numbersusa.com/

By J. Deane Waldman, M.D

Physicians who still practice medicine cannot afford to write or say the following for fear of being canceled.  As a retired physician, I cannot be coerced to keep silent with threats to my medical license or hospital privileges. COVID-19 is probably the greatest and most successful swindle in history.

By comparison, Carlo Ponzi and Bernie Madoff were pikers. The COVID scam has affected most of earth’s 7.8 billion inhabitants, consumed trillions of dollars, and achieved a level of government control unprecedented in modern democracies.

The COVID “pandemic of fear” is a con, perpetrated by those in power to extend and expand their power. Their scheme is simple. Take a new flu-like respiratory virus created in China, COVID-19; tout it as a threat to all human life; suspend (temporarily, of course!) personal liberty and freedom; then justify their tyranny by asserting a need to protect all Americans from death by virus.
When the threat recedes, redefine the terms, demand vaccine passports, and booster shots to maintain public fear. As new viral variants evolve such as Delta or Omicron, resume draconian measures including masks and lockdowns, more boosters, and loss of employment if unvaccinated.

Make sure any evidence exposing the scam is labeled “misinformation.” Censor any reports that call into question the accuracy of official narratives. Punish those who question the government or refuse the mandates.

Is COVID a scam, or is it a real danger? Are masks safe? What are the effects of Washington’s anti-COVID policies: medical, political, financial, and social? Does natural immunity protect us? Do medications work?  What does the data show us?

Medical risk. Based on CDC data, the risk of death for children is less than 0.1 percent and for healthy adults less than 0.17 percent. COVID is dangerous only to a small segment of the population: the elderly, diabetics, and the infirm with serious pre-existing medical conditions such as immunocompromise, chronic lung disease, kidney or heart failure, often several of these illnesses in a single patient.

Since the true health risk could never justify the imposition of pseudo-martial law and taking away constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, Washington said COVID was an existential threat to all, like bubonic plague or Ebola.

To provoke public panic, Washington reported “COVID deaths” on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis, claiming a total COVID death toll of more than 790,000. This mortality data is distorted. Only 12 to 23 percent of the deaths were actually due to the virus, based on autopsy data and medical demographics respectively. The majority died primarily because of their pre-existing conditions.  Anyone who died with a positive COVID test was classified by the CDC as a COVID death regardless of the real reason they died, viz., a fatal motorcycle crash.

Mask mandates. The Washington swamp mandated lockdowns, social distancing, and wearing face masks, as a demonstration of their power.

It may seem reasonable that masks are protective, but medical data from Sweden, Israel, and U.S. schools suggest otherwise. They don’t protect. Worse, masks may actually be dangerous. A group of concerned Florida parents performed a study, which revealed that kids’ face masks contained dangerous pathogens that can cause pneumonia, Lyme disease, tuberculosis, and meningitis, among others. Mask efficacy and safety research was not done by Washington as it would have revealed their scam.

Effects of Washington policies. The touted benefit of Washington’s COVID mandates is saving lives. The cost of their mandates – lockdowns, PPE, social distancing, and coerced injections – is both staggering and ignored by the feds. Deaths due to social isolation are up, in the elderly as well as teenage suicides. So too are both crime and drug usage. Mental health has declined as have opportunities to learn for school-age children. Economic losses, particularly in small businesses, are massive.

Would Americans have accepted such self-destruction if Washington had been truthful about COVID being merely a new flu, dangerous only to a small fraction of the population?

Immune protection.
In those with intact immune systems, viral infection first induces protective antibodies and later T-cells and B-cells. Antibodies gradually fade months after the infection, but the T- and B- killer cells retain the memory of the viral signature and provide long-term protection. This is called natural immunity. When enough people have acquired such post-infection (natural) protection, herd immunity stops viral spread.

A natural immune response occurs when the killer cells’ memory sees any one of the numerous viral protein “spikes.” Vaccination with mRNA gene therapy teaches the immune system to identify and respond to only one protein spike. Natural immunity is stronger and more protective than mRNA injection, even with boosters.

The precise number of Americans with natural immunity is grossly underestimated because the true number of COVID infections is not known. For the first year of COVID, only symptomatic patients were tested. How many asymptomatic COVID “cases” were never identified? Almost certainly, tens of millions,

The federal government minimizes the number of asymptomatic COVID infections because of natural immunity. Washington even denies natural immunity’s protective nature. Admitting this would reduce the fear factor.

Treatment. To maintain the COVID scam, Washington has to ignore, disparage, and even suppress information about treatments for COVID such as Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and monoclonal antibodies. Otherwise, there is no justification for imposing mandates.

Call to Action

Americans have a bone-deep commitment to individual liberty and freedom. This is apparent from the grassroots activities pushing back against recent authoritarian over-reach, from parents suing school boards over CRT and vaccine mandates for kids to sinking poll numbers for the Biden administration.

With the COVID scam exposed, the following is our call to action.

Recognize what is happening and why. Washington has created a false threat from COVID. The scam is designed to circumvent the Constitution and restore tyranny, this time by the professional political class rather than an aristocracy.

Resist Washington’s power-grab. Wear a face mask or don’t: you choose. Spend your money at businesses that reject Washington mandates. Use the courts to push back against federal overreach and illegal orders.

Reject self-styled medical authorities with megalomaniacal statements like “I represent science,” as though other physicians’ studies or experience aren’t real science. When bureaucrat-MDs like Anthony Fauci tell Americans what reports and data they cannot see, reject such censorship. When President Biden orders you to inject yourself with experimental gene therapy (mRNA), reject his instructions. Decide for yourself.

Also reject news outlets and social media that support Washington’s scam, viz., New York Times, Washington Post, CNN; and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Republish studies labeled “misinformation,” denigrated, downplayed, or outright censored. A Google search for the Great Barrington Declaration [950,000 + signers] produced: “This site can’t be reached.”

Replace government officials who support and encourage the federal scam. Use the ballot box at all levels, from president, congress, governors, and state representatives to your local school board and city council.

Progressive Democrats, temporarily in control of both Congress and the White House, are engaged in realpolitik, German for practical politics. Realpolitik is a system of decision-making focused solely on increasing one’s power with no regard for ethics, morality, or effect on others. The COVID scam may be their greatest ploy as they move forward on their Path to Power and the resumption of tyranny.

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director, New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of the multi-award-winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine.  

AMERICAN THINKER

In his extraordinary essay in Le Figaro, Prof. Pierre Vermeren writes of Islamization on all fronts of European society. Op-ed.

By Giulio Meotti, INN       

Giulio Meotti

“France and Belgium are the weak links of the West in terms of national identity in crisis and the intellectual disarmament of their elites in the face of multiculturalism (France has the largest Muslim population in Europe after Russia) and remain the target principal of the Salafist movement and its political and financial supporters. For them, Brussels is the key city in terms of Islamic penetration: it seems politically submissive, the births of Muslim children are almost half and the Islamist lobby within the institutions of the European Union works at full capacity ”.

Professor of the History of Arab Societies at the Sorbonne University in Paris and one of the leading scholars of the Islamic world, Pierre Vermeren thus begins his extraordinary essay in Le Figaro. He tells of an Islamization on several fronts, both oblique and transversal fronts.

There is the political front: “La Seine-Saint-Denis has fallen into the arms of La France Insoumise, this new social and radical left. Who led the mobilization? The Islamist vote. The Muslim Brotherhood and their foreign supporters opt, as in Belgium, for the weaker party, the one that will defend their demands (subsidies to community associations and mosques) or that will not harm their interests ”.

Vermeren explains that “in a Europe where billions of euros of cannabis money circulate, Islamism has entered a hyperactive phase since 2015”. At the international level, political Islam is driving the European one after having obtained two strategic victories in six months, with the withdrawal of the Americans from Afghanistan and the French from Mali.

“In Nigeria (where 2,543 Christians were killed in the first six months of 2002) not a week goes by without young Christian women being kidnapped, priests and faithful killed, or churches being destroyed. At the other end of the Muslim world, in Pakistan, Islamists are committed to persecuting the remaining Christian communities, kidnapping young Christian girls, raping them, converting them and forcibly marrying them, as has been done for centuries. In Europe, not a month goes by without an attack or a murder attributed to someone more or less linked to the radical Islam movement ”.

What is the situation on French territory? “The attacks were a success for the Salafists: if the country resisted, the attacks strengthened the Islamic communitarianism of young Muslims – as many studies attest -, made visible by the veil of young Muslim women. The veil, which ten years ago was limited to a few cities in the north and east of the country, has become the norm in many neighborhoods (Île-de-France cities) or cities (such as Lille) and has even established itself in Bordeaux and Brittany. This Islamism is led by the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, with which their foreign supporters and financiers (Maghreb and Gulf countries) compete. Furthermore, the European Commission and the American authorities, as surprising as it may seem, treat it with benevolence: the promotion of the hijab is the subject of intense communication in Brussels and Strasbourg ”.

Added to this is the censorship. “Thus, this year, three terrible murders have been ‘discreetly’ silenced, over which two Jewish families and a family of military doctors (in Sarcelles, Lyon and Marseille) have mourned, committed in the name of Islam in at least two cases, but which he preferred to psychiatrize and hide. We recall that under François Mitterrand, the ‘only’ desecration of the Jewish cemetery of Carpentras mobilized the whole of France. Today few are surprised by the almost total disappearance of Christian crosses and plaques in so many suburban cemeteries – broken and then thrown away -, not to mention the arson attacks and the weekly desecration of churches which, in some cases, may have an Islamist motive “.

Then there is the disappearance of non-halal butchers in many suburban cities or in small towns with a “cité”: “After suffering spitting or malicious gestures, the merchant silently leaves the area and moves to a middle-class neighborhood or a small town where its sought-after activity flourishes “. When hundreds of young people from the northern suburbs (citizens or foreigners from the Maghreb and not brought to justice) rob tourists and humiliate the police and the state at the Stade de France in front of hundreds of millions of viewers, “the public authorities are speechless” .

Then there is the school: “We mention the attitude that is found in many schools, which consists, from the earliest age of the pupils, in the refusal of lessons in music, swimming and fundamental historical facts (Shoah, Armenian genocide) … “.

In light of these evils, concludes Vermeren, “the relief felt by the French and their leaders at the disappearance of the great attacks is not without cowardice. Do not kill hundreds of people without specific targets with the almost certainty of dying in these attacks. In seven anni, the threshold of tolerance for the unacceptable rises a little more every year. The polls indicate that many young French people strangely accept this situation, while our leaders are turning away ”.

Vermeren, with considerable contempt for academic and journalistic conformism, masterfully recounts a gigantic operation of the overturning of a civilization. It should be at the top of the list of European governments. Instead, they happily cooperate with it.

The U.S. government should invite the Taiwanese government to duplicate their semiconductor plants in the USA, with U.S. taxpayer financial assistance. Strategic importance for U.S., Taiwan and the free world.