China’s latest island grab: Fishing ‘militia’ makes move on sandbars around Philippines’ Thitu Island Jamie Seidel, AFPNews Corp Australia Network, March 5, 2019 9:19AM There’s a new name in the South China Sea’s growing list of flashpoints: Thitu Island. While nowhere near the scale of Fiery Cross or Mischief Reefs, this island and bundle of low-lying sandbars off the Philippines coast is just as significant. It’s a prosperous fishing spot. And it’s another potential territorial marker in the hotly contested international waterway. Now, China has physically staked its claim over the sandbars that surround it. Filipino fishermen say they are being driven away from their traditional fishing grounds, by Chinese boats. The waters between Thitu Island and Subi Reef, both of which are near the northwestern Philippines, have long been claimed as part of its territorial waters. But, since 2015, China simply took over Subi Reef and used land-reclamation engineering to turn it into an enormous naval and air force fortress. Beijing has recently staked a claim to almost the entire South China Sea, even though it extends far to the south and east of the mainland. It includes waters claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam. Mayor Roberto del Mundo of Kalayaan, a Philippines Palawan town which administers Thitu Island, has told Inquirer.net that his fishermen are being elbowed out. Thitu Island itself is home to a Philippines slipway, jetty, runway and anchorage. But fishermen attempting to operate from there are being turned back as soon as they approach the nearest sandbar just 3km off the island’s coast. “It means they (the Chinese) think they own it because they refuse to leave. If they’re just really fishing, they can leave for Subi Reef and then come back, but they no longer leave,” Del Mundo said. “The presence of Chinese boats is now affecting our fishing activities. It wasn’t that way before. When our fishermen is about to get near Sandbar 3, that is really our fishing ground, a Chinese vessel would immediately come up to us to ward us off so we can’t come closer.” “On January 22 at 7 in the evening, I personally witnessed a helicopter that flew over the island. It did not flash a spotlight (searchlight) … It happened fast; it made a few rounds and then it left,” Del Mundo told the Inquirer. “We were nervous because it might erupt into something. But we just stared at it until it left. It went towards (the Chinese fortress of) Subi Reef. It headed towards Subi because on the other side there’s nothing there.” More....... https://www.perthnow.com.au/busines...tu-island-ng-7805269e5fe270f59e7657328f0c6382 Pag-asa (Thitu) Island, part of the disputed Spratly group of islands, in the South China Sea located off the coast of western Philippines. A satellite image showing the island's location. A satellite photo dated March 20, 2018, showing the artificial island fortress of Subi Reef - just 24km from the Philippine-occupied Thitu Island.
Trump needs a win w/China, he'll surrender the South China sea as he was willing to surrender Belarus to Russia and Yemen to Saudi.
I think we should start WW III over this. Also, a Russian boat bumped into a Ukraine vessel somewhere. Nuke them immediately. We have millions of border jumpers being organized by Soros groups and assisted by mexico invading our country, but that's not a big deal.
There was in the news today (marketwatch) about Chinese hacking into USA Universities, stealing military information. These guys are giving Chinese a very bad reputation which will hurt them badly in the future. I can't see them winning with this attitude.
It was Putin who told Trump to cancel the US / Korea military exercises. Russia Blames Dems, Cheers Kim Jong Un After Trump’s Korea Summit Fail President Trump may be getting advice from Putin about how to handle Kim Jong Un, but Russian state media make it clear the Kremlin's playing for Pyongyang. Trump suspended joint military exercises with South Korea and canceled two annual large-scale military drills, giving up the joint military-readiness posture. Note that Vladimir Putin has long lobbied for these cancellations. During one of Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin in 2017, the Russian president reportedly advised the U.S. to stop joint military exercises with the South Koreans in order to moderate Kim Jong Un’s behavior. But apart from checking off a box on the Russian president’s wish list, the cancellation of exercises did not bear any fruit in dealing with the North Korean dictator. In Moscow, since the Hanoi summit, the cheerleading for North Korea has continued. On Russia’s state TV program 60 Minutes, Gleb Ivashentsev, Russia’s former ambassador to North Korea, said that the Hanoi summit represents a colossal achievement for Kim Jong Un, who surpassed his father and his grandfather “by forcing the head of the largest imperialist nation to negotiate with him as an equal.” Ivashentsev opined that for Trump, the summit was nothing more than a distraction from the government shutdown, the wall on the border with Mexico, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and the testimony of the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. Russian military expert and the Editor of National Defense magazine Igor Korotchenko said the outcome of the Hanoi summit represents a failure solely for President Trump and a victory for Kim Jong Un, who elevated himself to Trump’s level without conceding an inch. Russian experts perceive the Cohen testimony and the efforts by the Democrats as a tangible danger to Trump’s presidency, speculating that Kim Jong Un refused to offer any concessions to the U.S. president who might soon be removed. Yevgeny Satanovsky, the president of the Moscow-based Institute of the Middle East, referred to Donald Trump as the “acting president of the United States” and Konstantin Asmolov, an expert from the Center for Korean Studies, asserted that making a deal with Trump, who might soon be ousted, is pointless. Asmolov argued: “If Kim conceded anything, then Trump’s successor might say that everything that this clown [Trump] has signed was not in our [U.S.] national interests and then Kim would end up in Gaddafi’s position,” alluding to the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who gave up his nuclear program in cooperation with British and American intelligence, was deposed with the support of the U.S., the U.K, and France, and then tortured to death. Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russia’s main weekly news show Vesti Nedeli, summarized that negotiations with North Korea were President Trump’s only claim to fame in the foreign-policy arena. Now those, too, can be added to the long list of his failures. “After all,” Kiselyov concluded, “Trump miraculously managed to worsen relations on all fronts: with the European Union, China, Russia. Total failure in Syria. The same with Turkey. Failure with Iran and failure with Venezuela. Nothing but failures at every turn... Trump, who calls himself the ‘master of the deal,’ left Vietnam empty-handed.” Amid all of the perceived American failures, in fact, the Hanoi summit turned out to be a golden propaganda opportunity and a win-win situation: for Russia and North Korea https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-blames-dems-cheers-kim-after-trumps-korea-summit-fail
If Obama were still President, he would offically recognize the US way underpaid Russia for Alaska and return it back to them as a gesture of goodwill and for another Nobel Peace Prize.
You mean the same Obama who was considered a "radical that wanted to start WWIII over Crimea" by right wingers? That Obama?
I’m talking about the Barrack Huessein Obama who was elected President of the United States after many irregularities leading up to his nomination. 1. Obama received an apparent “sign on bonus” through a sham real estate transaction where he was able to acquire real estate way below market value. I believe a search under Tony Rezco will enlighten those who don’t know about this. 2. Obama won a Senate seat as a possible result of result of influence peddeling. Too few people have asked the question of all the places Obama could have launched his political career from: “Why did Obama choose Chicago? A prominent Democrat, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went to jail over trying to “sell” Obama’ Senate seat. 3. There were other, very experienced Democratic contenders who wanted that Senate seat. They were told to stand down, presumably paid off, in order to let Obama win it basically uncontested. 4. Hillary was leading Obama in the primaries before the media overnight started to support Obama and starting trashing Hillary. What entity was behind this? Mother Putin? Or was it just Soros? The Democratic Party has a long history with the labor unions as did Russia, formally known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Philosophically, there are many simularities between the Left and Russia. This relationship started in about the 1920s. 5. All this before Obama was even President. As President, Obama decimated our millitary, FBI, intelligence agencies, and police either by firing and replacing key people, applying pressure to them through media, or applying internal pressure. There were many exceptional people that resigned in protest over their treatment in the Obama administration. This received scant coverage in the US media. 6. Obama created several “Czars”, a Russian word to further his policy in several areas. More significantly, Obama created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and installed those who had little experience other than helping Obama’s political campaigns. These new Government workers were paid an exceptionally large salary outright, without even considering these workers lack of experience, low responsibility, or low professional requirements. 7. 1 billion dollars spent on creating a website for Obamacare. The website had many issues from day one. $300 in the private sector would get a solid website setup that would have worked on day one. Where did all that extra money go? 8. Obamacare. Healthcare times have gone up, doubling in a lot of cases. The price of healthcare has soared, with some drugs going up thousands of percent in notable examples. Businesses became reluctant to hire full time employees because of the expense of this program. 9. Obama expanded the requirement of businesses to use certain environmental testing companies, engineers, and remediators for certain transactions, increasing development times, costs, and risk to businesses. Businesses preferred to hold cash rather than invest, resulting in a lukewarm economic recovery in spite of near zero short term interest rates, QEs 1, 2, and 3, TARP and Economic Recovery acts. 10. Obama was able to successfully structure the economic stimulus package to be weighted to the later part of his term where it would be calculated to help him politically. This is the Obama I’m talking about. People have been accused for being a traitor for less. Under the Obama administration millions, if not billions of dollars were removed directly or indirectly from public funds and businesses to go to Obama created businesses in order to create a political kickback system. The moderate Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for allowing the Radical Left to whine about how the $130,000 payment to Stormy was structured. By the way, even there Stormy did not perform. (Her end of the agreement). Do we need to explore the Solyndra fiasco and use it as a detailed case study for Obama’s and the Radical Left’s corruption? To answer your question about nuclear war, the United States has been doing well: No nuclear attacks for 73 years. Besides, in the current “modern era”, I rate nuclear weapons as only the fifth most scary weapons of mass destruction. Still powerful enough to end the relevance of the human race, though. More specifically, it would be a global foreign affairs benefit if the Democrats and Republicans agreed to a sound set of principles in foreign policy. Russia wants to reclaim their former territories, we don’t want them to under Putin. All parties are playing a game where miscalculation could end badly. Real badly. The question is, should the United States get out of Putin’s (AKA Mr. Polonium) way or should we oppose his every move until he dies and a more moderate Russian leader emerges? Obama is case study why we don’t want those with Socialistic or Radical Left types of philosophy in our Government, especially in leadership positions. Such philiosophy can only polarize our people and political decisions. Including possible nuclear decisions under stressful conditions during transfers of power, for example.