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Earlier in the week, we were all treated to the announcement of a new and improved trilateral security pact between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia (called AUKUS). The most memorable thing about the announcement (read Sister Toldjah’s post, Watch: Biden Makes International Headlines for Embarrassing Reason After Awkward Moment With Aussie PM) was Joey Soft Serve forgetting the name of the Australian prime minister.Despite the placid, if short-bus-ish ambiance of the announcement, there was drama brewing out of sight.Biden announced that the United States would allow nuclear submarine technology transfer to Australia. This is significant. It would make...

Imagine if leaders representing nearly half the world's population were to meet, and it didn't make the nightly news. Very little has been reported in the Western Press about the latest meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which met this week. Consider the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to be the NATO of Asia. For 23 years, the SCO has brought together leaders from the other side of the world to provide economic and political cooperation and support. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were there, respectfully representing Russia and China. Also attending were leaders from India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Also in...

The President took part in a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum. The theme this year is On the Path to a Multipolar World. September 7, 202212:40 Russky Island, Primorye Territory The event was also attended by Chairman of the State Administration Council, Prime Minister of the Caretaker Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Myanmar Min Aung Hlaing, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Mongolia Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai, and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China Li Zhanshu. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of Malaysia Ismail Sabri...

The Biden administration seems oblivious to the rapid and dangerous deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations. Putin was already vexed over a host of other incidents. On January 26, Biden criticized Nord Stream 2 for "making Europe dependent on Russia for its energy." On February 19, in his speech at the Munich Security Conference, Biden accused Moscow of working to weaken NATO and the E.U. and promised to "resist these attempts." Then there is Biden's move to see new sanctions leveled against Russia over the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. There are also numerous economic issues. In a deal sealed in August 2020...

Britain’s trade minister Liz Truss has said the National Health Service (NHS) would not be put up for sale, as she prepares to discuss a free-trade deal with the U.S. in the next few weeks. “My main priority now will be agreeing a free-trade deal with the U.S., building on the successful phone call between the Prime Minister and President Trump,” she wrote in a Telegraph column late on Sunday. …

A wild raccoon dog has been terrorizing a U.K. village, terrifying locals and attacking pets. SWNS reports that police were called to Clarborough in Nottinghamshire this week after some residents were subjected to a two-hour standoff with the strange-looking animal. Villager Mandy Marsh was woken by a “blood-curdling scream” early on Tuesday morning and her husband Dale ran outside to see a raccoon dog confronting the couple’s pet goat and pony. "He came back and he said to me 'you are going to have to come and see this, there is something in the field attacking the pony and I...

Archaeologists working at the Rising Whale site at Cape Espenberg, Alaska, have discovered several artifacts that were imported from East Asia. Bronze artifacts discovered in a 1,000-year-old house in Alaska suggest trade was occurring between East Asia and the New World centuries before the voyages of Columbus.

President Barack Obama said during the visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in February that “we welcome China’s peaceful rise [and] we believe that a strong and prosperous China is one that can help bring stability and prosperity to the region and the world.” Few presidents have made statements so stunningly disingenuous as this. For as he was speaking, Obama was presiding over a shift in military doctrine whose central tenet is that China is, and will be, the main military threat to the United States for at least the next generation. Weeks earlier, in November 2011, the Pentagon...

In the Pacific, saber rattling is done with missiles. North Korea has announced that it will launch a Taepodong ballistic missile to celebrate the birthday of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, on April 15. The country claims this will be a satellite launch, but most observers agree the test is meant to demonstrate a weapon delivery system. Either way, it violates a fresh agreement that North Korea signed just one month ago pledging not to test long-range missiles. In a notice to the International Maritime Organization, North Korea says the missile stages will splash down near the west coast...

Legal immigrants are required to have medical screening to ensure that they do not bring any contagious diseases into the United States. Illegal aliens are not screened and many are carrying horrific third world diseases that do not belong in the USA. Many of these diseases are highly contagious and will infect citizens that come in contact with an infected illegal alien. This has already happened in restaurants, schools, and police forces. Malaria was eradicated from the USA in the 1940s but recently there were outbreaks in southern California, New Jersey, New York City, and Houston. Additionally, Malaria tainted blood...

There is a resurgence in interest in South Korea's fighter aircraft requirements, with the east Asian country deciding on a variety of aircraft as part of an ongoing modernisation of its air force's capabilities. The choices represent a mix of imported and indigenous solutions, with the country trying to find a way to match its operational requirements with a desire to promote the local industry, mainly state-owned Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI). South Korea has maintained three levels of fighters - low, medium and high - as part of its operational capability. At the low level are Northrop F-5s, at the...

There is growing pressure on US President Barack Obama to sell advanced F-16 fighters to Taiwan. “The time to provide these fighters is now,” Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, told a major hearing held by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Thursday. It became clear as witnesses were questioned that many, if not most, of the commissioners agreed. Taiwan’s request to buy 66 F-16C/D fighters is now being considered by the White House. “The military and strategic imperatives for Taiwan are real and urgent,” said Diaz-Balart, the opening witness at the day-long hearing on developments across the...

SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place? ... The one who had the greater effect on Japan’s...

ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have secretly bought a £4m bolt-hole in the Far East while his country struggles with hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and a cholera epidemic. The Mugabes’ house, in an exclusive residential complex in Hong Kong, was purchased on their behalf by a middleman through a shadowy company whose registered office is in a run-down tenement block. When a reporter and a photographer called at the house last week, they were attacked by the Zimbabwean occupants. The assailants were questioned by the police. The property came to light during a Sunday Times investigation into the...

As goods pile up in wharves from Bangkok to Shanghai, and workers are laid off in record numbers, people in East Asia are beginning to realize they aren't only experiencing an economic downturn but living through the end of an era. For over 40 years now, the cutting edge of the region's economy has been export-oriented industrialization (EOI). Taiwan and Korea first adopted this strategy of growth in the mid-1960s, with Korean dictator Park Chung-Hee coaxing his country's entrepreneurs to export by, among other measures, cutting off electricity to their factories if they refused to comply. The success of Korea...

Clinton Says China Not an Adversary NEW YORK | Two days before traveling to Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that China is not a U.S. adversary and Washington will engage it on many issues, beginning with resumption of military talks suspended by Beijing over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan last year. "Some believe that China on the rise is, by definition, an adversary. To the contrary - we believe that the United States and China can benefit from and contribute to each other's successes," she said in a speech at the Asia Society in New York...

This really doesn’t look good

Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2008 A new study on ancient human migrations suggests that Orcadians and Siberians are closely related, writes Roger Highfield. Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations. The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the...

Tibetans storm Chinese Embassy in Paris Phayul[Monday, March 17, 2008 02:46] By TenamParis, 16 March: A group of Tibetans stormed the Chinese Embassy in Paris this afternoon. One Tibetan protester climbed the Chinese Embassy and replaced the Chinese flag with the Tibetan National Flag. Tibetans and Tibetan supporters in thousand, in an appeal by the Tibetan Community here had gathered few blocks away from the Chinese embassy. After a while a group of Tibetan broke away from the cordoned area and started running towards the Chinese Embassy. After a brief scuffle with the police in front of the Embassy,...

Japan proposes 'peace' tunnel to South KoreaJustin McCurry in Tokyo guardian.co.uk Friday February 15 2008 Politicians in Japan have proposed the construction of an 80-mile "peace" tunnel to South Korea that would boost trade and symbolise a recent warming of ties between the former enemies. The proposed tunnel, more than twice as long as the Channel Tunnel, would link Karatsu in south-western Japan and Pusan in South Korea, via two islands in the Japan Sea. It would be part of a 140-mile (230km) rail link passing through the Japanese islands of Iki and Tsushima, and making it possible to travel...