NRB Chronicals 2022 - Joshua Philipp | The Epoch Times

Ever felt like you were born in the wrong decade?

Or maybe it was the wrong dimension altogether. If you can relate, welcome home. We're Emily Estefan and Gemini Hernandez, your resident weirdos, artists of all trades, and multicultural couple. And this is your official invitation to join us on our new planet, I mean podcast, called In Our Own World. We'll navigate conversations about anything under the stars and maybe even pick up a few passengers along the way. Listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Coca-Cola.

There's magic when we eat together. So NRB Chronicles, man, oh man, it's always pinch me I get to talk to somebody else cool that God has brought here in front of me. And so I have Josh Philip, and he is with Epoch Times, which looks like epic to me, but it's Epoch.

It's all in where you're from. If you're an American technically it's Epoch Times. If you want to speak the Queen's English, it's Epoch Times. So what's Epoch Times? Epoch Times is an independent international news outlet. We're in, I believe, 34 countries, 23 languages, and the fastest growing news outlet in America. Really?

Yeah, yeah. That's total ignorance on my part. So Epoch, what kind of news do you cover and how do you cover? So I'm the host of a show called Crossroads, and we're on our platform Epoch TV, epochtv.com, and I do investigative reporting.

So I'm also the senior investigative reporter. I recently, for example, did one on military vaccine mandates. It's called the Pentagon's War on Religion. And I really dug into, I got whistleblowers to step forward, I got internal military documents, and we show it through this special feature we just did, that without a doubt the military has been discriminating against religion.

This isn't even just limited to COVID-19 and vaccinations, this is bigger than that. So how about God and Joshua? Like, how did you get, like, did you feel called to this, or how did that happen? So it kind of fell in my lap, so to speak. I've been with Epoch Times since 2006, and I was just a student at it. I was a bright, you know, bright-eyed, just happy to, you know, happy to do whatever at that age. In 2008, I got offered a summer internship. Epoch Times was still very new at that time.

In 2005, you know, we launched the English edition, everything like that, right? So I was right there from almost the beginning. In 2008, I got offered an internship in New York City, and I'm like, oh, heck yeah, I'll go there.

That's the media capital of the world. And I accidentally uncovered one of the Chinese Communist Party's largest spy operations in the United States, and also uncovered an operation working between the Chinese mafia and the Chinese government, which made my life very interesting. And pretty epic. And pretty epic. And, you know, they threatened to kill me quite a few times, but I'm still here, as you can see. And some of them went to prison through my reporting, which was also very satisfying. Wow. Wow.

And so you're in the, and all of a sudden, God drops this, like, could you sense his guidance through that? Can you kind of walk us what that feels like as that reporter? Well, so this is a story, basically. You know, I got sent to New York City. There were these big, weird protests happening in one of the Chinese communities. It's an area called Flushing. It's kind of like the new Chinatown.

It's in Queens, end of the subway line into Queens. And basically, there were weird events taking place. This is right before the Beijing Olympics back in 2008. And we heard stories of the CCP at that time, the Chinese Communist Party, for example, putting on the robes of Buddhist monks and attacking people in China. We heard of them persecuting religions, of course. I think all this is well understood now, but at that time, this was not nearly as well understood.

And in New York City, they were doing similar things. There were groups of house Christians. As you know, the Chinese Communist Party, they banned Christianity, except for the state-run version.

If you don't practice the state-run version, you're a house Christian. There were house Christian groups, democracy groups. They were beating them on the street. One of the biggest targets of these physical attacks were practitioners of Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, which is like a Chinese meditation practice, right? They were attacking them on the street, beating them up, spitting on them, threatening to kill them. And it was like mobs of individuals just beating different members of the community up. And I was there like, man, what the heck am I watching?

I had no idea what I was looking at. I start talking to people and all the Chinese people are like, oh yeah, those people who are attacking everybody, those are Chinese spies. I'm thinking James Bond spy.

I'm thinking like Tuxedo and the Martini. These are guys in white undershirts with stains on them and they don't shave. You know what I mean? I'm like, no, that's not a spy. What are you talking about, a spy? And over time, I gradually uncovered it.

One, I started noticing patterns. These people on the sides of their bull horns, different materials they had. They had names of organizations, names like the Peking Association, names like the Shandong Association, names like the Pukian American Association.

And I was like, oh, what are these? I find out these are the tongs, Chinese fraternal organizations. The Pukian American Association, for example, runs the Puk Ching Gang, one of the largest transnational organized crime groups in the world. Human traffickers, drug traffickers, they were the ones who did the Golden Venture, which was one of the biggest human trafficking disasters in American history. Big ship ran aground off the coast of New York filled with people illegally coming from China. Many of them died.

It was really terrible. That was the Puk Ching Gang, F-U-K-C-H-I-N-G. And then I find out that the Chinese Consulate General at the time, Peng Keiyu, was meeting with these individuals. I'm like, okay, why is the Chinese Consulate General meeting with members of the Chinese Mafia as they're carrying out physical attacks against Chinese dissidents in New York City? And over time, I find out this is part of what they call the United Front Work Department, which is how the CCP infiltrates other countries. I found ties to different politicians, including John Liu at that time and others. And through my investigations and writing about this constantly, I mean, several times I was surrounded by individuals threatening to kill me. Very often, things like that would happen. One of my contacts, they threatened, they told me that he threatened, they threatened him. They said they hired a hit man to chop off one of his hands, for example. So I wrote a story about it.

I said, well, let's see you do it now, because everyone's going to know it was you. And they didn't do it, sure enough. But over time, yeah, this turned into a very large story. More articles on it. It got the attention of the U.S. federal government. Eventually, the FBI actually launched an investigation into one of the key figures on this, which was John Liu, former New York City controller, ran for mayor. And when he was running his mayoral campaign, FBI unveils its case. And it turns out that he was getting straw donors from these individuals who were basically trying to rig the elections. Two people went to prison, one of whom was the head of the Phuket American Association, one of the Chinese mob bosses. The other one was the daughter of a Chinese, well-known individual tied to Chinese spy networks.

Her name was Jenny Ho. You weren't, Josh. It's been a fun ride, I'll tell you that. My mind is sitting there because, you know, I'm, just last night, we're previewing this movie. I don't know if you're familiar with it. What is it?

Finding Courage. Right. Actually, I've actually interviewed the director of this before, Kay Rupetek.

Right, I have too. She's great. She's really good. They're filming this movie tonight in our booth. Oh, are they really? And there's two of the Chinese people of the cast that are going to be up there tonight at eight o'clock. Really?

I'm hoping you'll come. Well, you get this. It's by UA. But anyway, yeah. And so, I'm just hearing this and she was telling me, like I just interviewed her.

And she was telling me that about every ten years they have this and she was describing exactly what you just described, almost exactly the same thing. And they can't get their movie shown anywhere in the United States because China owns everything. That's right. About every ten years, the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, will launch some kind of persecution. And this is just part of the communist ethos. You know, they always want to have something to struggle against. They always need to have the oppressor of the oppressed.

They always have to designate part of the society for the rest of the society to be against and to drive the campaigns forward. That's just how they operate. I am so impressed. I mean, my word, God has gifted you. I mean, I'm just sitting there going, look what God did. I mean, you went up on this internship and he's given you such an understanding of what is such a complex thing that I know our listeners are just like, how wonderful it is that God allowed me to do this interview.

I'm just like, man, how cool is it? And so what would you want our listeners to know? I mean, I know about the Epic Times or how can we help you? Because you just blessed us to know a whole lot we did not know. I'd encourage everybody to check out our new website. It's Epoch TV or Epic TV, E-T-O-C-H-T-V.com. I recently did a big special feature on military vaccine mandates and how this actually ties into a bigger picture of religious discrimination by the Pentagon, including labeling, for example, Christians as domestic terrorists.

We really uncovered quite a bit with it. But Epic TV as well, we have a lot of Christian content. We have a lot of videos there, movies, everything. And again, excuse my ignorance, I'm just an old guy.

All right. So if I go home and I go, I want to watch Epic TV, like, is there a streaming service? Do I call cable? How do I get Epic TV? So we have an app. You can download it on your iPhone or your Android.

Can I download it on my TV? I think we are in Roku. I'm not sure if it's the whole platform, but individual shows are. We are in Roku.

But you can put an app on your phone. And we're on cable as well. And then you could, like you did the chosen, you could do your TV on your own.

Much like the chosen. I'm friends with those guys too. The Harmon Brothers are great. Oh, they're amazing. But yeah, so if you have a computer, go online. It's epochtv.com.

And again, if you have a smartphone, get our app, Epoch TV, epoch TV. Wow, what a, what a, I mean, I'm so blessed to know God has you out there, man. And how courageous. And just God bless you.

And how can we pray for you, Josh? Oh, man. Well, you know, we're fighting the good fight, so to speak. You know, we're independent media. But honestly, we're, again, as I mentioned, the fastest growing media in the United States.

Epic Times. Now we have magazines. We have, again, a video streaming platform. We have a news website.

I can understand why. Like, oh, we need this desperately. How hard is it to find any facts out there that are reliable right now?

Thank you, Joshua. It's an opportunity as well. You know what I mean?

It's like, the other media right now, a lot of the mainstream media, they're destroying themselves by lying to people. You know, it's not that hard to tell the truth. You just say things as they are. It's not that complicated. I'm sure, you know, I know you do some great work also. It's not that hard just to be honest.

You know what I mean? Yeah, the truth goes a lot further. Thank you, Joshua. I'm so honored, really, to have met you and see what God's doing with you. God bless. My pleasure, sir. Thank you.